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THE OPEN MYSTERY 



A READING OF THE MOSAIC STORY 









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" All these things are done in parables.' 

" I will open my mouth in parables : 
I will utter things kept secret from the 
foundation of the world." 




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BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

(CtJE 0itoEr?ibe |&re??, Cambrilige 

1897 



35551 

,vi5l 



Copyright, 1897, 
By ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY. 

All rights reserved. 






The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 3fass,, U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. 



^ 



TO 

MY GRANDSONS 

FOR AND WITH WHOM THESE STUDIES WERE BEGUN 

THEY ARE NOW AFFECTIONATELY 

DEDICATED 



PRELIMINARY 



In this old Story — at the heart of it — is 
something that is true ; something that has 
been believed and lived. Something there is 
here that is beyond all question of mere out- 
ward form, or order, or authorships ; some- 
thing that has been given into the souls of 
men who have been thus received into the 
" fellowship of the mystery " which was from 
the beginning, and yet was not a hiding 
against all finding, but only a safe - covering 
for a sure, continual bringing forth. The 
secret of the Holy Scripture is a perpetual 
making manifest. 

The Bible is not to be read or argued on 
the surface. The Truth for which it was 
lived and written lies below. The miner who 
finds gold may not know the geologic history 
of the earth-crust he has to search and pene- 
trate. He seizes upon such clue as the gold 
itself gives him, and learns an instinct and 
perception for following its veins. He strikes 



VI PRELIMINARY 

through all the drift and shift and conglomera- 
tion of the ages, not caring so much for how 
it came there in just such shape as for the 
treasure it bears. 

There is such a simple, effectual way of 
searching the Sacred Books. 

In this Reading of the Mosaic Story it has 
been tried. 

To reach and understand the central unity, 
— to see that it is the solution of all external 
doubts and complications, — that it is " the 
same yesterday, to-day, and forever," the very 
Christ-life of the world, — is the end of all 
endeavor to trace and comprehend these Ini- 
tials of Revelation. 

A. D. T. W. 

Milton, January 6, 1897 



CONTENTS 



PART I 

PAaB 

THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 1 

PART II 

THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

CHAP. 

I. The Garden 21 

II. The First Crime 36 

III. The Deluge 42 

PART III 

THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

I. The Light of the Living 71 

II. Consecration and Sacrifice 78 

III. The Mistake of Abraham 92 

IV. The Patriarchal Character 99 

V. Egypt 120 

PART IV 

THE EVENTS AND SIGNS OF THE EXODUS 

I, The Rod of Power 143 

II. The Giving of the Great Name .... 153 
III. The Lord's Passover 159 



viii CONTENTS 

IV. The Spoiling of the Egyptians .... 166 

V. The Cloud and the Fire 170 

VI. The Red Sea 177 

VII. The Hunger and Thirst of the Wilder- 
ness 185 

VIII. The Mountain 191 

IX. The Ten Sayings 198 

X. Forty Days in the Mount 217 

XI. The Tabernacle 222 

XII. The Golden Calf 232 

XIII. The Clift of the Rock 237 

XIV. The Sedition of Aaron and Miriam . . 255 
XV. The Revolt of Korah 276 

XVI. The Budded Rod 295 

XVII. The Transgression at Kadesh . . . .311 

PART V 

LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

I. The Serpents of Fire, and the Serpent 

OF Brass 323 

II. The Story of Balaam 339 

III. The Vexing of the Midianites .... 358 

IV. The Camp in Moab 369 

V. The Righteous Commonwealth .... 387 

VI. The Entering In 400 

Closing Note 409 



THE OPEN MYSTERY 



PART I 

THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 

Thoughts come before things. 

There is no thing, anywhere, that was not 
a thought before it was a thing. 

The world was made out of God's thoughts. 

God's thoughts are in heaven ; the things 
He makes to show them by are on the earth. 

" In the beginning God made the heaven 
and the earth." 

If a man builds a house, he first builds it 
of thoughts. He thinks a house. He " makes 
up his mind " just what kind of a house he 
will have. That is what he calls his plan. 
He sees it all with his inside sight, before a 
stick is cut or a brick laid. Then he puts 
the sticks and the bricks together, and sets 
his plan in a shape. The shape tells what the 



2 THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 

plan has been, — the man's thought and pur- 
pose of a house. 

Then the use he puts it to is another telling 
of a thought. He thinks what kind of a life 
he wants to live, before he builds the house to 
live it in. So the house, and the house-keep- 
ing, are just a telling out of a plan in himself, 
of something that he is, and of what he wants 
to be. For to 5e, is just to act out what a 
thought of be-ing is. 

We may start, then, with this truth : that 
every thing is a showing of a thought. The 
thoughts are in heaven, — the inside world ; 
the things are in the earth, — the outside 
world. One is the region of the real, the 
other of the manifest. That there have been, 
that there will be, both, — " from everlast- 
ing to everlasting," — is the only possibility 
we can conceive. " World without end " 
must be a continual creation, — the appearing 
of the invisible by the visible, forever ; " the 
eternal power and Godhead clearly seen and 
understood by the things that are made." 

Can one imagine no-\hmg ? No light, — 
no air, — no sound ; no place^ even, that has 
no thing in it; for a place would be some- 



THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 3 

thing, — a space between things. We can 
not think of absolute emptiness and non- 
existence. We cannot think aiuay every- 
thing; we can only push things apart from 
each other, leaving room for what may have 
been, or might be, between them. We cannot 
look into vacancy, except from something next 
to vacancy, upon which we stand. Vacancy is 
only a place for something. We think away 
out to the edge of nothing, and lo ! we come 
against its edge. We try to imagine a hole 
with nothing in it, and we find there must be 
something around it, for it to be a hole. 

We read of a place where a world — or an 
earth — might be, but was not yet. It was a 
deep, shapeless darkness. It was an ocean of 
the unformed. Yet a thought brooded upon 
it. " The Spirit of God moved upon the face 
of the waters." God meant an earth there, 
and He was thinking it into being. 

When we think or plan, we have to take 
things already made to carry out our plan 
vdth. Earth, and stone, and wood, and water 
are the things we never could have thought or 
planned. We can create nothing. We can 
only use what is created.* God's thoughts are 
• 



J 



4 THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 

the essences of things ; they turn directly into 
things " by the word of his power." 

And what was the very first thing ? 

What does Moses — searching back in the 
spirit to very first perceptions — see and de- 
clare as the first creation, so far back as the 
mind of man can ever trace ? 

Light — unless the Darkness had been some- 
thing. 

God thought Light, and Light came. All 
through the empty Darkness, it shone and 
spread, and filled the great Nothing, and made 
Something of it. 

Perhaps, if we only knew, the making of 
things is but the separating out of the great 
Thought, — which is dark to us because it 
is all^ and we cannot comprehend all, — the 
parts or particles which may be comprehended 
by minds that are but parts themselves, and 
must take the truth in little portions. It is 
the only way a visible world, of parts related 
to each other, and acting upon each other, 
could be made out of an invisible Whole. 
God, undivided, is a Dark Presence. He 
divides himself, that He may make himself 
visible. 



THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 5 

Light was the first dividing of the Life. It 
was the first showing of God in the making of 
things. 

Light was separated from Darkness, and 
shone forth in it, everywhere, in unit particles, 
or atoms. 

And then began to work, in this first crea- 
tion or separating, the great, wonderful law by 
which all that is separated and made distinct 
urges and drifts together again, to become the 
one that it was before, and still is, however 
divided and individualized. 

The particles in this vast living Sea of 
Lio'ht drew tosrether. There was motion 
among them ; impulse ; the motion and im- 
pulse of Life itself. Whirling and winding, 
they gathered, here and there, in the immense 
spaces, into globe-forms ; and so there were 
suns in the heavens. So our sun began, and 
took a place. 

And then, as soon as each sun or globe was 
so far a One again, it reverted to the first law 
by which a One must be always dividing and 
giving itself to be a Many ; as God began the 
universe from himself. Each sun sent off its 
particles by that great giving impulse which 
is the beating of the heart of life ; and again 



6 THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 

these particles were whirled and driven, seek- 
ing each other, away out in the far distances 
to which they had again been thrown. Find- 
ing each other, and gathering in little, new 
globes, they became earths, or planets, each 
belonging to the sun that had sent it forth, 
and immediately wheeling round and round 
it, with the impulse to return to it again. 

It was a long time after these distinct 
globes of light were formed before there was 
anything else at all. But the life of all things 
was in the light, and the light was burning, as 
as well as shining, with it. All warmth is 
life, and the light was so full of life that it was 
hot, to an intensity that cannot be conceived. 
All possible things were in it in what we call 
a state of incandescence ; in a glowing molten 
fusion. 

We know very well in ourselves what it 
is to glow with a thought. To have some 
plan or purpose which so stirs the mind as to 
make it all a-kindle, and to send a sense of 
physical warmth through the very body. So 
it was with God's thought in the intensity of 
his creation. All things that were to be, and 
that were as yet unformed, seethed and boiled 
in the first created substance. Waters, earths, 



THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 7 

rocks, metals, plants, animals, — were all, in 
their elements, as one great surging mass of 
fervid fire. 

When a substance is intensely hot, we 
know that dividing it — breaking or stirring 
it — helps to cool it down. And exactly so it 
is with thoughts. Bringing them into sep- 
arate detail, placing and appointing them, 
calms them from the fervency in which they 
began to be. Use — turning thoughts into 
things and actions — changes fervency into 
fact ; makes it something definite and practi- 
cal, which is — usable, through having rela- 
tion to other things. Whatever power or 
possibility is in a thought, is power to become 
a substantial manifestation. 

By this very process, the thoughts hidden 
in the fire of the creation, and from which it 
was enkindled, became forms of life and use. 
God put them into act. 

He separated and separated them again, 
from each other, distinguishing them into 
individual quality and character and sub- 
stance ; and yet with such relation to each 
other, in nature and action and fitness, that 
they continually turned -again, in their differ- 



8 THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 

ent uses, toward the oneness of all in which 
they were at first. 

We call the mingled substance of the begin- 
ning, which was as fire, gaseous ; the particles 
of its great ocean, apart and moving, had no 
adherence of solidity ; they were free. No 
two particles ran together so as to make one. 
They interpenetrated each other, we say ; 
rather, they were intercurrent. 

Yet were they so secretly charged and con- 
stituted that they had hidden sympathies of 
kind ; by which they found each other out, 
and drew together. Not one atom could go 
astray ; it was sure to come to its own. In 
the earliest creation, as forever among his 
souls, God was, and is, the Z/07'd of Hosts. 
No many is too many for his certain rule 
and guidance. Each particle — of matter or 
of spirit — has its aim and place, and fails 
of neither. 

This elemental joining was the development 
of substances, the arraying of force, the mani- 
folding of condition and relation. It was the 
working out from the one Great Thought the 
details of its mighty and beautiful Work. 

Oxygen and Nitrogen, as we call them, — 



THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 9 

particles of matter vivified each by its own 
portion of the divine power, — found each 
other ; drew apart together, and a breath of 
life existed; an atmosphere in which life 
might feed was poured around the earth. 
God said, " Let there be a Firmament ; " and 
this clear, invisible flood gathered itself be- 
tween the forming globe and the far-surround- 
ing deep of unformed substance, " dividing 
the waters from the waters." That was the 
second point of Creation. Below, were the 
yet more intimately converging vapors that 
were condensing into seas ; above, were the 
thin, intangible ethers of a boundless space. 

The firmament enveloped the earth ; through 
it the Earth shone, still a star, hot and lumi- 
nous ; the waters upon it were hot oceans. As 
their particles cooled, and ran yet more closely 
together, developing density and weight, the 
crystal rocks appeared, the adhesion of other, 
different atoms which were all the while mak- 
ing their new combinations from the water- 
gases, and clinging together with a force so 
strong as to become what we call solid. Their 
attraction drew them closer and closer, until 
it seemed to bring them to a full stop, and 
fasten them to a shape and place. They were 



10 THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 

no longer fluid, or flowing, biit fixed. Around 
them, and down into all the huge hollows be- 
tween, rolled and settled the waters. There 
were now mountains and seas. The Creation 
— the wonderful separating and orderly join- 
ing again of shining atoms — had got so far : 
to fluid and solid. But the fluid, for a long 
time, was hot water, and the solid was hot, 
slowly cooling and hardening rock. This was 
the Third Day ; the third period of the vast, 
long process. In it, the hot rocks, worn by 
the hot water, — that is, their particles dis- 
turbed in their close clinging, and loosened by 
the rush and surge and pressure of the ocean, 
whose own elements fed also upon the elements 
of the rocks, seizing and bearing away what 
they in turn had special appetite or seehing 
for, — began to give up something of their 
hard hold, and to be separated and carried 
off, as soft soil, by the tides and currents, and 
lodged in any crannies or against any ridges 
where they might rest ; and this softened soil 
was the earth in which might be new motions 
of atoms of life. These were vegetations ; an 
action of yet deeper powers of life ; a choosing 
of particles in organic relation ; not a mere 
clinging of substance, but a using upon each 



THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 11 

other a wonderful influence and help by which 
together they could build up living forms and 
begin living uses. Receiving and giving be- 
gan. God's Thought had so prevailed by the 
urging of his great Will that it had made of 
itself tabernacles, receptacles for the higher, 
larger inflowing of that Will, to the perfect 
unfolding of its revelations. Out of Life was 
to come life ; thought, at last, was to derive 
from Thought, and return to it in conscious, 
loving joy and obedience. 

The first of life was in atoms, again ; in 
minute cell-forms ; mere simple spheres of 
substance which had in them some blind 
unconscious hunger. 

There was a desire shut up in matter, which 
reached continually for the Spirit that had 
framed matter to be filled with Itself. And 
the Spirit poured in, and life began. 

There was action, reaching; cell put forth 
cell, and made more room for holding Life. 
At first there were only what seemed con- 
glomerations ; then one part began to minister 
to another of the life ; to take relation ; to 
divide into functions. And all this " worked 
that self -same Spirit, dividing to each severally 
as it would." 



12 THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 

Vegetable cells built up into stems, searched 
downward into roots ; drank thirstily of the 
life that was in air and earth and moisture ; 
knowing in themselves nothing but to be 
hungry and thirsty and to eat and drink ; not 
feeling or foreseeing what was feeding in 
them toward a higher power, a more perfect 
glory. But God's intent and meaning were 
in them and behind them, working surely to 
his final purpose all the while. 

Grass blades grew out of the first simple 
soil; tall, rank, and strong, with the first 
intense potencies, we suppose they were. 
Grasses branched into herbage ; stems reared 
further and further into the waiting air and 
sunlight, taking their inspiration from above, 
and put forth leaves and fronds. The leaf 
was prophecy and parable. It had in itself 
the elements of all future structures ; the skel- 
eton-fibre, — the sap-filled veins, — the tender 
tissue which the sap - secretions formed into 
body and outline. 

The Day of the grass and herb was upon 
the earth. It was " evolution ; " but God was 
the Evolver, and the evolved was his manifes- 
tation. 

Forever descending upon and into the 



THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 13 

creation were light and breath ; forever ascend- 
ing were the asking and the reaching and the 
absorbing. It was the ladder of the living, 
between heaven and earth, up and down which 
traveled the angels, — the ministers. " He 
maketh his angels spirits (breathings) ; his 
ministers a flame (a shining and a warmth) of 
fire." 

Read all that hundred and fourth Psalm 
with this thought of the creating God in it ; 
the working and giving of his life and power. 
Did not David have the same faith in the 
making of things that Moses had ? And has 
Science, at the point even to which it has crept 
in this day, any contradiction to this great 
Belief which goes behind Science, and grasps 
on to future Fact which Science alone will 
never reach ? 

Is not the song that "the morning stars 
sang together " the same that sang in the hearts 
of Moses and of David, — yes, more, is it not 
in the full Revelation, — the '''Song of Moses 
and of the Lamh " ? Is it not the Alpha and 
Omega of the Word of Creation ? 

It was the Fourth Period, according to the 
belief of Moses, in which the great order of 



14 THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 

the heavens was unrolled, and became apparent 
from the point of earth. No man was yet there 
to see; but man afterward looked back by 
thought and reason, or by the intuitions through 
which God led thought and reason to know- 
ledge, and placed himself in wondering imagi- 
nation upon his home-globe in its genesis 
halfway completed, and saw thence the vast 
opening panorama that must have been 
revealed. The great Light that was first 
made, — that was everywhere, — that had 
still wrapped about the earth itself beyond its 
own little air-ocean, as with a garment slip- 
ping slowly away and disappearing, as the 
planet cooled, by the scattering of its atoms 
to invisibility, — had been as a " darkness 
from excess of light," to hide, as daylight hides 
the stars, the bodies shining in far space, and 
moving, to primitive understanding, in their 
majestic rhythm of Night and Day and the 
great Seasons of the Year. 

Moses only knew the heavenly motions as 
accounted for by men of his time ; but his 
perception was something far more interior 
and essential, and so more real and true, than 
his knowledge or his eyesight. He knew, 
within his mind, straight from God's Mind, 



THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 15 

something of how it must have been. He 
took his start from the great Certainty in him, 

— God alone is : from God began the world : 
and he traveled icith God down the awful 
divisions of his Will into Act, the successions 
of his power in grand, inclusive stages, instead 
of hach, with a half-blind human exploration 
from far, subdivided effects into central causes. 
He believed what reached him this wise, of the 
truths of the Beginning; it \Y2iS faith in him, 

— immediate conception ; — that faith which, 
thousands of years afterward. Saint Paul told 
the people of the Christian Church is never 
of ourselves, or our finding out : " it is the 
gift of God." 

So, by this wonderful gift, which always 
precedes discovery, it came to Moses to inter- 
pret and explain an order of things which all 
the world's study ever since only verifies as 
a magnificent outline of a history concerning 
which Science may go on laboring forever in 
finding out particulars, but can never, with 
any however wise details, gainsay or contra- 
dict. 

The blinding Light, then, gathered itself 
away, as when some great work is finished the 



16 THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 

material out of whicli it has been put in form 
is cleared from the beautiful fabric ; and 
Creation stood manifest, as we see it now ; it 
was another " Let there be ! " from the voice 
of God. " Let there be lights ! " Separate, 
orderly, each in its own place and circle, 
instead of the rushing, universal, unformed 
Light. " Lights in the firmament of heaven," 
the upper, far-off space ; "to rule the day and 
the night, and the seasons and the years, and 
to give light upon the earth. And it was so. 
And God saw that it was good. And the 
evening and the morning were the Fourth 
Day." Always an evening and a morning ; a 
time of dimness and waiting and half accom- 
plishment, and a time of achievement, and 
gladness, and a new step forward in the story 
of things. 

The earth was ready, with light and water, 
air and food ; all was cooled down to a soft, 
though fervid, temperature, in which animals 
might live, and breathe, and eat ; and then 
came the command, Let there be living crea- 
tures in the water and in the air. Notice 
the explicit form of it, which anticipates all 
that we are finding out from the other end — 



THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 17 

creeping back to the Inspiration of God by 
the path that explores to Him through the 
curious, invisible ways of matter, that are but 
the obediences of creation to his will : notice 
how Moses believes that God said, " Let the 
waters bring forth abundantly the moving- 
creature that hath life." 

Moses did not know what germ-cells were, 
we suppose : we need not be too sure even of 
that ; but we are certain that he did know 
what the germ-cells are teaching us, — that 
fluid matter is the very motion of creatures 
that have life ; that it is instinct with God's 
own life and purpose in the material ; and 
that from his first thought and command, all 
was in his world that ever should be : that his 
world was simply of and from Himself. 

And God blessed them — with the very 
force and gift of his own life ; saying, " Be 
fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters, and 
the seas, and the earth." 

And the evening and the morning were the 
Fifth Day. 

And God said, " Let the earth bring forth ! " 
The waters and the air -had their fishes and 



18 THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 

their fowl ; let tlie earth find out its hidden 
elements of being ; let the creeping thing and 
the beast be alive and glad in their way and 
their place that God had given them. And it 
was so. And God saw that it was good. 

Now we are in the long Sixth Day. There 
was no pause after this. When the beast had 
been made, the work was very near the best, 
the human ; and it went swiftly on. 

" God created man in his own image ; " He 
had brought the receptacle up to the highest 
receiving possibility : He " breathed into him " 
his own breath, and "man became a living 
soul." The life of the spirit was added to the 
life of matter ; a son of God's own likeness 
stood forth, to possess and understand and use 
his works. " Let him have dominion," were 
God's words, proclaiming his child's inherit- 
ance. " Let him rule over the fish of the 
sea, and the fowl of the air, and over the 
cattle, and over every creeping thing that 
creepeth upon the earth." 

" Over .• " it was outside rule and use ; 
ivithin, God kept his own place of power and 
work. He gives the inward being, always ; 
with the beast, and with man, it is so forever. 



THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS 19 

He waits till man desires and asks, and con- 
sents in obedience^ to give liim the highest, 
the inmost of all ; the spiritual birth into a 
sure, eternal, as yet unmanifested, life ; this is 
" the power of the Eesurrection." 

" Of the dust of the ground," — of matter, 
and in relation to matter, — is the first man ; 
" of the earth, earthy ; " God breathes into 
him a human power of life, and he becomes a 
soul ; He will yet breathe into him the Holy 
Ghost from heaven, and make of him a quick- 
ening spirit. 



PART II 

THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 



CHAPTER I 

THE GARDEN 



Moses begins the garden-story in his second 
chapter of the Book of Genesis, or the Record 
of the Beginnings. In it he recapitulates the 
" generations," or the births of things, with 
a summing up of the facts ; a repetition of the 
one great statement that this origination, and 
all its majestically unfolding succession, was 
of the Lord God, who " made the earth and 
the heavens, and every plant of the field he- 
fore it was in the earthy and every herb of 
the field before it greio ; " they being in his 
Thought before the things were, and the possi- 
bility of them being hidden in the living force 
of creation, from the very first word until 
the definite completion. And Moses repeats, 
" The Lord God formed man of the dust of 
the ground : " man, also^ — the highest created 



22 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

thing, was of and through the lowest ; the 
intent of him and the process of his making, 
being in all, from the very first particle-birth 
of matter, and the preparation of all being 
for the environment of his life and training in 
the earth. 

It is here, in his personal relation toward 
man, that the God of Creation is called The 
Lord Grod ; the Bestower, the Provider, the 
Ruler of human life. It was the Lord God 
who " planted a garden eastward in Eden ; " 
a home-place and centre for his child ; and 
who walked there with Adam in the cool of 
the day ; in the morning freshness of his be- 
ing, and of all things. 

A garden is a safe place where living 
growths may be cherished. God put man 
into a garden; and he planted the garden 
eastward in Eden^ which is toward the sun- 
rising^ in delight. 

Did Moses mean some little patch of ground 
only, literally bounded by the four branches 
of the great River of Western Asia ? Or did 
" Eden " stand for the whole beautiful, un- 
spoiled, orderly earth, and " eastward " mean 
its whole steady unerring turning toward the 
Source of Life and Light ? 



THE GARDEN 23 

"Eastward," all through the Hebrew Scrip- 
ture, denotes, inmostly, toward God. For 
joy and worship men turned eastward. " The 
glory of God came by the way of the east." 
The Levites, in the Temple, singing and 
praising the Lord, " stood at the east end of 
the altar." Even when threat and disaster 
are foretold, as judgment or discipline from 
God, it is from the east — out of his Power 
and Presence — that they are said to be sent. 
It was an east wind that brought the locusts 
which devoured the land of Egypt ; it was 
an east wind that drove back the sea for the 
safe crossing of the Israelites. " Because my 
people hath forgotten me," saith the Lord 
in the prophecy of Jeremiah, " I will scatter 
them as with an east wind before the enemy." 

So, whatever the " Garden of Eden "* was 
in reality, — w4iether just one literal spot of 
earth beautiful and safe between great rivers, 
and lying beneath a glorious warm-brooding 
sky ; or a type-image of the first, essential 
life of man, abiding in the love and peace of 
the Almighty Presence, and the life of his 
Righteousness, — it was eastward^ — toward 
the heaven whence came the sun-shining, the 
power, and the glory.- It means that there 



24 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

was a time of simplicity and direct knowledge, 
when man lived with God, and knew Him as 
his Friend. 

Out of this garden, this early life, Moses 
believed and said that man was driven by 
sin ; by disobedience to the holy ; by a turn- 
ing back from God into himself. By seeking 
to himself the knowledge, from earth-grown 
sources, that he should have waited upon God 
for, and taken just in the way and time that 
God should give it. By hastening to make 
bread for himself out of the stones of the 
material, instead of living by the immediate 
daily bread of the Word of God. 

" Dress and keep the garden that I have 
made ; eat the fruit of the trees of it ; take 
all the good that grows out of it for your 
own living : but of one hidden, central thing, 
seek not of your own power to seize ; be not 
impatient to realize and decide and command 
for yourselves the Why, and the Why Not, — 
the evil and the good. Leave the knowledge, 
the understanding, the ordaining, the revela- 
tion, to Me. The inmost meaning, the eter- 
nal outcome, of your life are Mine. Day by 
day you shall live by me, as I will give you 
life continually. You cannot live of your^ 



THE GARDEN 25 

selves ; the purpose and tlie gift are mine : if 
you think to take these presumptuously into 
your own will and doing, — if you turn from 
my instant leading and commandment, you 
shall not live ; you shall surely die." 

The First Great Commandment was set 
forth then. " I am the Lord thy God. Thou 
shalt love me — lean to me — receive me — 
in all things: in your heart and mind, and 
soul and strength ; your desires, your thoughts 
and knowledges, your power and act. My 
Strength, my Truth, my Love are the Source 
and Feeding of them all. It is the Sacrament 
of Being. I am your Daily Bread. Ye shall 
live by my word alone." This was the secret 
of the Law of the Garden, which Moses put on 
record in a history under a figure, long before 
he graved it at the head of the First Table 
of Stone, for the leading of the Children of 
Israel back out of the slavery of Egypt into 
the freedom and blessing of the Promised 
Land. 

Moses believed, and tells in the story, that 
man was not a complete being except as male 
and female ; that it was in the image of God's 
own Nature he was so created as a double 



26 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

one. Man stands for the Thouglit, that forms 
in specific understanding, and eventuates in 
act ; woman for the Desire, the Impulse, the 
Motive, that is at the hidden heart of Life, 
and urges it to its realization and detail. 
Knowledges, and the Love that reaches out 
and proves itself in knowledges — what else 
complete and unify desire and experience ? 
And what else but desire and experience 
comprise and express the whole of human 
life? 

Dominion was given to man in the outset ; 
before his dual nature was declared to him. 
Motive was supplied as the feminine to the 
masculine ; the inner, spiritual hope and affec- 
tion were inalienably joined to all outward 
reach and achievement ; together they made 
the doing of the Will on earth and in heaven. 
And lest mind and heart should ever lose 
relation to each other, each was separately 
personified in a duplex human existence, a 
mutual and dear personal representation. 
Adam and Eve, the man and the woman, 
lived together in the Garden of Eden : " out 
of the ground " the beasts of the earth and 
the bodily Adam were formed; out of the 
essential Man himself was taken the principle 



THE GARDEN 27 

which became existent to himself as coun- 
^terpart and complement; the only possible 
revealing to him of the double nature and 
image in which he had been created ; in 
which only, because it is the nature and image 
of the Divine, he was to be able to love, and 
know, and live from the Lord his God. 

And then the parable goes on. For fact 
or fable, all things are parables. And next 
we learn the story of the woman and the 
serpent. 

Into human desire, — represented by the 
woman, as the affectional nature of man, — 
came a false understanding, an earthly sub- 
tilty, represented by the cunning, creeping 
thing of the ground ; the creature that was 
only wise with a little keener wisdom in the 
same way as the other " beasts of the field." 
Only a beast of the field, — a life and under- 
standing of the lowest things, after all, though 
it dared to touch and promise of the highest. 
And this lower understanding, getting hold 
of man's desire, put this question into that 
side of his nature : " You are not to know all 
things ? You are not to eat of all the trees ? 
And yet the trees are there, and the fruit of 



28 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

them. Why are they in the garden ? Yes, 
in the very heart of it ? Why should you not 
be wise even to the heart of things ? " 

Perhaps we had better stop a moment right 
here to remind ourselves afresh that we are 
studying what Moses believed ; what he got 
hold of, behind what he saw, that made what 
he saw plain to him ; and to understand his 
way of putting it,' we must grasp with him this 
vital centre, this real thing he was sure of, — 
and then see if we can comprehend how he 
would be likely to present his faith in words, 
and what were the circumstances that had 
shaped his methods of thinking and expres- 
sion. 

Reading back through man's experience in 
the world, this was the inner fact that Moses 
had found out, — speaking, as we do, of what 
God teaches through thought-processes in the 
human mind : that there was, and is, a first 
law^ — a law in the heart, in the sense that 
is above thought, as spirit is above brain. If 
first law had been obeyed, the ten command- 
ments would not have needed, as ten distinct 
precepts, to be graven on stones. The first 
man — or the earliest men — whether Adam 
alone in Eden, or a beginning of the race in 



THE GARDEN 29 

the earth just large enough to come into 
mutual relations — knew, by intuition, by an 
inward implanted word, a law of right and 
wrong. The may do^ and the may not do^ 
were perceived by a sense of things created in 
them ; " the light that lighteth every man 
that Cometh into the world." It said to 
them, — and it was the word of the Lord, 
" nigh, and in the heart, " — " Of all the 
fruit of the garden," — of all the things that 
I have made and given you, — " take and use ; 
eat of all the trees that are good for food ;^' 
enjoy, assimilate, grow by them ; they are for 
your life ; " in all these things is the visita- 
tion of my Spirit." Know the good, by pos- 
session, by appropriation, by putting it into 
deed. But so you shall not know evil. Of 
evil, — that it may be, and that it is the 
opposite and antagonism of good, — you may, 
you do know : by experience, by j^utting it 
into deeds, you shall not know. " Ye shall 
not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and 
evil."" 

All this story of Adam and Eve and the 
serpent is a setting forth of this truth that 
Moses believed lay at the beginning of moral 
history. The commandment was in the inner 



30 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

consciousness. Positive good was all about 
man, created for him, in his reach; evil the 
negative, was a something involved, as light 
involves shadow. Wrong lay over against 
the right, as a possibility. But it was not to 
be experimented ; not to be put in form, tried, 
tested by man's act, to see whether he could 
eat of it and not die. 

Man was not to walk in the shadow, but in 
the light. 

How was Moses to tell this to the Children 
of Israel, to whom he desired to give the 
truth ? How had he himself been taught all 
inner knowledges ? He was " learned in all 
the knowledge of the Egyptians." He had 
been brought up and taught among the signs 
and mysteries of the priests. He was trained 
in symbolisms ; he knew all the stories of their 
gods ; the fables in which were told eternal 
facts, but in which the fact and fable were 
carefully kept separate, — the fable for the 
ignorant people, the fact for the priests only. 
So what wonder, if when he had a great single 
truth to tell, — something that had cleared 
itself to him out of all the mixture of false 
and earthly imaginations, and had showed him 
plainly the One Power and Life of things, 



THE GARDEN 31 

and the Law of its Righteousness, — he should 
tell it to them in a simple story suited to their 
interest and comprehension, or, if the story 
were already made, that he should indorse it ? 
It is the way the truth is told all through the 
Bible, — by the signs in things, and in the 
outside life of men. Reasons are folded in 
appearances ; the naked, abstract, spiritual 
truth is clothed in history, in example. Every 
Hebrew child could understand and remember 
the story of Adam and Eve and the serpent 
and the forbidden fruit ; as childhood grew 
into maturity, in the individual and in the 
race, the inner meaning and knowledge of the 
story would dawn and expand to them ; not 
to contradict and confuse, but to illuminate. 
But for a long time — having, through trying 
to be as gods, knowing the good and the evil, 
lost out of their hearts God's first inspiration 
of knowledge — men had to live in types. 
They had to learn, partially and darkly, by 
an outside form. It would only be when the 
form of things and the soul of things should 
be made one to them again by a pure obedi- 
ence, that they should have once more the 
sure, direct perception, the Visitation of the 
Spirit. 



32 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

Meanwhile, it was given to one here and 
there to " know the mysteries," and to tell 
them again, in symbolic legend that should stay 
by in outer memory, until the inner apprehen- 
sion should awaken ; " Zes^," — in case that^ 
as the Lord of Truth puts it concerning his 
own speech in parable, - — " they should at any 
time repent, and be converted, and I should 
make them whole." 

In those early days, and under their habits 
of speech, the people at least knew this ; that 
they loere taught in parables, and that some- 
thing mightier than they were yet able to re- 
ceive was for the time hidden from their eyes. 

It could scarcely have occurred to the 
grandly simple mind of Moses, wise in the in- 
finite deep meanings and intent upon their 
utterance, that in a remotely future time, after 
reiterated prophecy and gospel, there should 
come into brief succession upon the earth a 
generation of men so learned and shrewd in 
naturalisms as to let go his divine insights in 
gravely arguing the circumstantial credibility 
of his similitudes ! 

He believed that the Law of Good and Evil 
was the Law of Life and Death. That life 
only lives by good, and that evil in itself is 



THE GARDEN 33 

death, and has to die. By learning evil, man 
came to the necessity of death, that a new life 
of good might be begun. Good is the only 
everlasting ; bad must pass away. Through 
long time, through long pain ; because evil 
has joined itself to life, and clings to it as 
disease clings to the body. But the end is the 
death of the evil. Disease is perishing, — it 
is the process of it. The outward body may 
go with the disease, but the life escapes : if 
there is yet good with the life it will begin 
again. To be given over to evil altogether is 
the everlasting Death. 

Moses saw and believed yet further concern- 
ing this innate Law of Righteousness which 
was the Commandment of the Garden ; and 
he goes on to tell it in the story. 

So Moses wrote, " The man knows good 
and evil ; he has partaken of them both : he 
may not put forth his hand, as he is now, to 
the tree of life, and eat, and live so forever. 
The evil must first be done away. Therefore 
the Lord God drove man forth " out of the 
safe, sweet garden where he could only have 
stayed in his early innocence, and sent him 
into the wilderness, to .struggle, to suffer, to 



34 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

conquer. And the shining, terrible Law, of 
Life for Good and Death for Evil, stood be- 
fore the gate of the garden, and "kept the 
way " by which there was now no returning. 
Man had chosen the other way, and he must 
go on through its toils, its dangers, its sor- 
rows, its needs, to learn the good of Good and 
the evil of Evil, and to come to the eternal life 
by the suffering of earthly death. 

That was the way Moses explained the 
great problem of things which concerns every 
human soul. Each soul is its own Adam, and 
makes its own choice. But evil choices have 
made it harder and harder in the world. We 
are not in a garden, but in a wilderness. 

It was long, long after Moses that the great 
word came through One who lived the truth 
and died for it : " In the world ye shall have 
tribulation ; but be of good cheer ; I have 
overcome the world." And through the vision 
of Him by his apostle, — " Fear none of 
those things which thou shalt suffer : be thou 
faithful unto death, and I will give thee a 
crown of life." " He that overcometh shall 
not be hurt of the second death. To him that 
overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden 
manna, and will give him a white stone, and in 



THE GARDEN 35 

the stone a iieio name written. I will write 
upon him My new Name." " To him that 
overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my 
throne, even as I also overcame, and am set 
down with my Father in his throne. He that 
overcometh shall be clothed in white raiment, 
and I will not blot out his name out of the 
book of life. These are they which came out 
of great tribulation, and have washed their 
robes, and made them white in the blood of 
the Lamb. Behold, I make all things new." 
" Blessed are they that do his commandments, 
that they may have right to the tree of life, 
and enter in through the gates into the city." 
The first chapters of Genesis and the last 
chapters of the Revelation should be read the 
one with the other. The Garden of Eden, 
where God walked with man in his first inno- 
cence : the new heavens and the new earth 
wherein is to dwell righteousness, — where is 
the Holy City, New Jerusalem, the taberna- 
cle of God with men ; these are the begin- 
ning and the end, the purpose and accomplish- 
ment, the type and the fulfillment. Between 
lies the whole moral history — the whole 
spiritual evolution — of mankind. 



CHAPTER II 

THE FIKST CRIME 

Moses tells — or indorses — here a very 
simple story; a mere matter of tradition, it 
would seem, as handed down among the early 
people of the earth, regarding the first births 
and lives of men, and the first differentia- 
tions of humanity from original type ; the first 
workings, in consequence, of character and mo- 
tive, resulting in open act. Going behind 
the letter of the narrative, which is our study 
in these testimonies, we have found the great 
faith in a Divine Personality and Power, of 
which things made are the evidence, to be the 
inner understanding of creation ; and that the 
order of creation follows inevitably the order 
of a Divine Life. 

Now we come to the story of human life in 
its divine relation and its natural environment, 
and of how the perfect unity and co-working 
of these was disturbed by sin, until the divine 
and the natural were even set in a horrible 



THE FIRST CRIME 37 

antagonism. Moses is as brief in his outlines 
as lie was before. He explains not ; lie does 
not discuss ; lie sets forth plain fact, behind 
which lies cause, the be-cause of his tellino-. 
His very brevity shows the urgency of inner 
purpose. It is the eternal Why of things — 
it is the spiritual law of life — that is searched 
out and put on record. Moses is not a mere 
reciter of old legends. 

The key to the whole account — the reason 
why of the happening and history — lies in 
the seventh verse of this fourth chapter of the 
Beginnings. " If thou doest well, shalt thou 
not be accepted ? And if thou doest not 
well, sin lieth at the door." That which " lies 
at a man's door," is the charge to him of his 
doings ; the point and showing of his personal 
responsibility. 

Sin lay at the door of Cain, in that he had 
made an untrue, insufficient offering, — one 
that, in its nature and motive, could not be 
accepted. Acceptance was not arbitrary, of 
favoritism. It was of integral worthiness — 
worth-ship. Sin lay farther back than Cain 
himself ; in the first departure from a holy 
loyalty, by which the son of Adam and Eve 
came into an inheritance of evil tendency, a 



38 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

strain of something in himself against which 
the better of him would have to struggle. 
Sin is departure^ aberration from right and 
love. Crime is violent act against them. 
When sin had got into the world, crime 
followed : upon loss came woes. 

Cain and Abel were very likely twin 
brothers ; this probability has been deduced 
from the concise statement concerning their 
birth. They represented the twofold nature 
of man. Cain means acquisition^ — the tak- 
ing to one's self. Eve said, " / have gotten 
a man from the Lord." There was self 
claiming first place. The child was hers ; she 
had gotten him. In the child was born, and 
in him ruled, this principle of getting, — of 
assuming and appropriating. Ahel means a 
hreath^ hence, superficially interpreted a tran- 
sitoriness ; as if it were a prophecy of his 
short life upon the earth. Why not, rather, 
an insjnration ? Why not the quickening 
of the Spirit, the birth to something higher 
than the mortal inheritance of self and sin ? 
The rest of the story is plain indication that 
such significance was there. 

Abel was a keeper of sheep. His work was 
chosen among living creatures. He served — 



THE FIRST CRIME 39 

with love, feeding, cherishing — the life. 
Not the mere material, — the " fruit of the 
ground." He was drawn to gentle, living 
sympathies ; to the work of shepherding, 
which was type of the Lord's own care of liv- 
ing souls. In this, he was on a higher plane 
of use and affection than his brother Cain. 
And it was of life — life that he loved, — 
life that was as his own — that he offered 
his sacrifice. This, though still only in the 
type, means all. It is the giving of life, — 
of heart's desire, — to the divine will and pur- 
pose, that God wants, not the formal, outside 
offering of things. For all things are already 
his : it is life only that He has so shared with 
his children that they may turn and offer it 
again to Him. Cain brought of his acquisi- 
tions. Abel brought of his living affections. 
The one of what he had got ; as if he could 
give to God. The other of what he was ; as 
already belonging to God. And each knew 
his answer of the Lord. How, the text does 
not explain. That belongs in the hidden 
sense. Moses only says, " The Lord had 
respect unto Abel and to his offering ; but 
unto Cain and to his offering he had not 
respect." And Cain was wroth. What with? 



40 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

JSTot himself ; not the lower of the double hu- 
man nature. With the higher nature of his 
brother, by which his lower was condemned. 
He sided with his own wrong ; that way lies 
wrath and punishment. Not with God and 
the truth against his own evil ; that way 
would have been forgiveness and restoration. 
Repentance sets God on man's side ; it annuls 
wrath, for wrath is only contradiction. 

Now comes God's demand. " Why art thou 
wroth? Why art thou contrary to Me ? If 
thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? 
And if thou doest not well, thy sin lieth in 
the way." 

And the terrible sentence follows, — the 
law of life and death, — the condition of con- 
demnation or of victory, — which sounds so 
enigmatical to first careless hearing, but is so 
deep in awful, righteous certainty. " And 
unto ^Aee," — unto this lower nature of thine, 
if thou by sin wilt have it so, — " shall be his 
desire," — the desire of the higher ; " and the 
lower shall tuIq^ 

The lower, — the brutal — did rule. " Cain 
rose up against Abel his brother, and slew 
him." 

What did Moses — what must we — believe 



THE FIRST CRIME 41 

by this, but that the earthly may slay the 
heavenly ? 

" And now " — came the voice of God 
again — " thou art cursed." Your life has 
crossed — thiuarted., — all my meaning for 
you. " The very ground " — even the earthly 
for the sake of which thou hast sinned — 
" shall not henceforth yield unto thee her 
strength. Thou shalt be a fugitive and a 
vagabond," — a restless, unsatisfied, baffled 
wanderer and striver — "in the earth." It 
was saying to him, " Go ; the earth is open 
before you ; struggle, acquire what you can ; 
but the very earth is not loitli you, for it is 
the outcome of, and works according to, the 
heavenly ; and upon the heavenly you have 
turned your back." 

Nevertheless, even Cain should not, as he 
feared, be slain ; he should not be destroyed ; 
life should remain to him, and so, surely some 
final hope. But now, " he went out from the 
presence of the Lord." 



CHAPTER III 

THE DELUGE 

The story of the Deluge is the story of 
a Great Cleansing. A taking away of men, 
that Man upon the earth might make a new 
beginning. 

Cain went out into the land of Nod. 

Nod means wandering. Cain was a vaga- 
bond ; the first great vagrant, without home 
or place upon the earth. He was a man with- 
out bond, or ties ; he had destroyed his family 
relationship and claim ; he was without human 
anchorage ; drifting, driven to and fro. Yet 
he was a man, and alive ; and his life, broken 
and spoiled as it was, went on. He made to 
himself new ties. No : man makes nothing ; 
he accepts. God still gave to Cain, — into all 
that was left on the God-side of his nature. 
He gave him wife and children ; and his chil- 
dren's children increased in the land of his 
wandering. 



THE DELUGE 43 

They began to learn the arts of life. Tliey 
built cities ; Cain bimseK built the first one, 
and called it after the name of his firstborn 
son, Enoch. Family and established home 
began to be, and to be dear and honored, upon 
the earth. There was all this to save, and 
to grow from, even for the man who had 
cursed himself against earth by the first crime, 
and for his descendants. 

Men grew wise and cunning in many works 
and inventions. They found out about music, 
— the management of sweet, grand sounds ; 
and they made instruments of sound — harps, 
and organs, — and learned the handling of 
them. Jubal, the sixth in line from Cain, 
and seventh from Adam, " was the father of 
all such as handle the harp and the organ." 

Notice this one little instance of the relation 
of letter and meaning in Scripture record ; 
a quite plain examj)le of how the first only 
indicates — not defines — the second. Jubal 
was not the progenitor, in the flesh, of all who 
have since lived as skilled lovers of music. He 
was the beginner of musical art ; the father of 
music, as Galen and Hippocrates were fathers 
of medicine ; as the seers of the first Chris- 
tian centuries were the, fathers of the Church. 



44 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

We liave no trouble in understanding tlie 
fact. It is only in divorcing letter and mean- 
ing tliat trouble and doubt come. Words, 
terms of speech, are but signs put forth. The 
real thing is behind the sign. Once accept 
this, and look for an interpretation in all, 
and tangles become clues, and darkness turns 
luminous. The every-day speech of to-day, 
used so carelessly and with such superficial 
intent, is like the rocks and fossils, rich with 
revelation, — full-stored with histories of old 
human experience. We never get the reality 
of anything without analysis. Why should 
we expect the profoundest truth to lie bare 
and evident upon the surface, in narrative 
and utterance through which men of old time 
signified their deepest, uttermost knowledges ? 
Interpretation is disclosure ; an opening forth. 
Of language, it is the rendering of something 
shut up in language, hindered by its limits. 
Except for symbolism, which brings like to 
like, reminding us of something we know by 
which we may begin to apprehend the inex- 
pressible, word and speech would not be hu- 
man. They would be as mere animal sounds, 
the cries of the beasts, uttering no thought, 
but only present, momentary feeling. We 



THE DELUGE 45 

are to remember tliis ; to start with it as a 
premise, and carr}^ it on into all conclusions 
in the study of what has been grandly and 
truly called "Holy Writ." For "holy" is 
" wholly ; " holiness is entireness, wholeness ; 
complete in both inward and outward, spirit- 
ual and natural, which are a whole, and not 
separate. 

Tubal-Cain, the brother of Jubal, was the 
" instructer of every artificer in brass and 
iron ; " of all useful and ornamental work in 
the metals ; tool-making, cunning and elabo- 
rate decorations : devices to reinforce human 
power in the subduing of all things to the 
service of human life, — fine and exquisite 
architectures and adornments, also. Away 
back before the Flood, before any connected 
and complete history, these skills and sciences 
began. To what they may have grown before 
the great destruction came, we have no record 
but that of scant tradition. Men lived long 
lives, and wrought and builded. The length 
of life itself argues much of complete achieve- 
ment. A man could shape and pursue his 
idea deliberately to perfection. He was not 
hurried, nor stopped short. A generation 
could accomplish what centuries have failed 



46 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

of since, in the slow periods of the middle ages 
which our histories chronicle. The same gen- 
eration held centuries in its unloosened grasp ; 
there was no detaching and imjoerfect join- 
ing again of purpose and progress. We have 
come to times now, when acceleration takes 
the place of continuance, and a man's fifty 
years are fuller and faster than — perhaps — 
Methuselah's nine hundred and sixty-nine. 

Yet how shall we compare, and know ? The 
higher the arts, — the more far-reaching the 
discoveries, — the frailer and more temporary 
the mechanical means and appliances, hence 
the more entirely perishing the indicating 
traces. The Pyramids stand for countless 
centuries : the electric threads that join the 
uttermost parts of the earth in instant inter- 
course, and inaugurate absolutely new eras of 
labor, method, power, accomplishment, would 
— were the thought of man that invents and 
uses confused and lost — vanish like cobwebs 
from off wind-blown twigs. 

What we do know is that as knowledges 
and skills increased, self and sin increased 
their power with them, just as they do to-day. 
We read of the " sons of God " taking the 
" daughters of men "to be their wives, and 



THE DELUGE 47 

that of such union giants of might arose and 
were renowned. What was this but the join- 
ing of divine force, given from heaven, to the 
desires and motives of earth ? Even this God 
allows to come to pass. He does not stop his 
gift, though men make earthly and evil use 
of it. His sun keeps on shining and stream- 
ing forth vitality, upon the just and upon the 
unjust. But, sometime^ in his oiun time, He 
interposes. He who says to the sea, " Thou 
shalt come thus far, and no farther," says the 
same thing to human pride and self-will and 
presumption. " When the enemy shall come 
in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall 
lift up a standard against him." The very 
Spirit, the very Law, by and under which 
men work to their own ends, becomes the 
Avenger, — that it may be the Redeemer. 

And so we find that there was a time when 
this came to pass in the far-back, legendary 
periods ; and that this visitation of God, the 
certainty of it, and the need of it, and the 
remedy by means of it, were what Moses be- 
lieved in. Always behind the awfulness, a 
mercy : an evil to be done away, a good to be 
established. That God takes in hand ichat 
man is spoiling, and, "utterly destroying the 



48 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

harm, gives man a clean chance again^ is the 
faith underlying all the woes and threats and 
judgments of the Old Testimony. It is the 
central Testimony itself. Grod's judgments 
are a solemn adjusting^ — a setting right : his 
judgments and his justifying are one, as the 
word is one. " Shall not the Judge of all the 
earth do right?" "O thou enemy, destruc- 
tions are come to a perpetual end : but the 
Lord shall endure forever ; he hath prepared 
his throne for judgment. And he shall judge 
the world in righteousness ; he shall minister 
judgment to the people in uprightness." That 
is what is to come of it all. 

In the mean time, something is true that we 
are hardly able to understand, so wonderful, 
so divine is it. And this wonderful, divine 
thing is what we read next, in this history 
that Moses believed, and it is the very secret 
of his believing. 

God com-passionates. He endures, suffers, 
with us. What we bear. He bears. What 
we bring upon ourselves, we bring upon Him, 
in the pain of his own wise, sure, terrible 
judgments. As it is the good — the God — 
in us that suffers in our remorse, it is the All- 
Good, — the God himself, — who suffers in 



THE DELUGE 49 

all the wrong of humanity. It is the "Lamb," 

— the Tenderness and Truth of the Heart of 
God, — "in the midst of the throne," — the 
Almightiness, — that forever shares with us 
in a mystery of At-one-ment. " God so loved 
the world " from the beginning, that He never 
spared himself in all the world's anguish. 
" The Lamb was slain from the foundation of 
the world." 

" He repenteth him of the evil." " He is 
gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of 
great kindness, and rej^enteth Mm of the evil." 

" Therefore, saith the Lord, turn ye to me 
with all your hearts." He gives of his own 
repentance into the hearts of men, that so He 
may forgive and restore. Repentance, — de- 
struction of evil, — turning back to the good, 

— there is no other wa}' ; there can be no other 
" scheme of salvation." And it begins in God 
himself. 

When man goes wrong, God is sorry. 
Wrong is sorrow, and the sorrow for it can 
only be in the good. When " God saw that 
the wickedness of man was great upon the 
earth, and that every imagination of his heart 
was only evil continually, it " — the evil — 
" repented the Lord that he had made man 



50 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

upon the earth, and it grieved him at his 
heart." 

This word " repent," here, is not the same 
that means " to turn back." It means just 
what the last clause of the sentence explains. 
It " grieved him at his heart." It was not 
change of purpose, or discovery of mistake. 
He knew what would happen when He made 
man ; He did not draw back from his under- 
taking now, and He never will; his "word 
never returns unto him void." He goes on 
with his work through all that He and his 
children must bear together, to perfect the 
glory that He means for them with Him : 
and all the way He is " tenderly sorry " with 
them. 

The destruction must come, — the renova- 
tion must be made. " I will destroy the life 
that I have made upon the earth, — for it re- 
penteth me." It would not have " repented " 
Him ; it would not have made Him tenderly 
sorry, if He could create, or permit, evil. He 
would have let man go on : He would have 
made him comfortable in his wickedness ; it 
would have been but man's living out of some- 
thing which God had in his own nature and 
had given to him. And the provision for it 



THE DELUGE 51 

would have been in his power. But God 
never does make man comfortable in sin. Good 
was the end of his creation; and until man 
himself would be sorry, and leave his evil, 
God himself must bear to be sorry for him. 
He must bring to an end, for the sake of a new 
beginning. Earthly life, in itself, was of no 
consequence. It was only as the training to 
and unfolding of a heavenly, that it mattered. 
It was temporary, anyway : and the " times " 
were " in his hand." 

The earth was "filled with violence," 
through the corruption of all flesh. There- 
fore, the time had come. I will destroy the 
flesh, and the evil, said the Lord. 

" But Noah found grace in the eyes of the 
Lord." Transpose the sentence. " The eyes 
of the Lord found his own grace in Noah." 
He found good, rather than evil, ruling in him. 
And not a particle of good can ever be de- 
stroyed. Noah, having a divine good in him, 
was to be saved alive. 

" Noah was a just man. . . . And Noah 
walked with God." 

And the name " Noah " means " rest," — 
" comfort." 



52 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

Rest in the Lord, and comfort of the Holy 
Spirit. 

The Holy Spirit also findeth " rest " in the 
soul that receives it. 

Here we have the whole Divine - human 
relation. 

Moses tells us that God " said " something 
" unto Noah." 

The just man, — the man who " loves justice 
and judgment," who works for them in all his 
doings, — who so " walks with God " in His 
own ways, — shall be spoken to in his heart 
by the Lord. 

The Lord walks and talks with his true 
human child who follows in his leading and 
listens. More than all the special story of 
Noah, and the rain and the ark and the great 
overwhelming of waters on the earth, and the 
saving upon Ararat, was, in the mind of Moses, 
this faith, Noah was a grand, representative 
man. The Flood was a representative circum- 
stance in the history of things. The great 
outward experience was great only as it re- 
vealed the inward. It is very strange that 
people take the letter of the narrative, the 
detail of the circumstance, to be the impor- 



THE DELUGE 58 

tant thing, — the thing to be made sure of 
or to disprove, to doubt or to believe, — and 
imagine that the whole spiritual authority of 
the Bible depends on such letter and circum- 
stance, imperfectly handed down and recorded 
in the memories and chronicles of men. They 
seem to forget that we have no* absolutely per- 
fect record of the details of any historical 
event. Of the main facts, the causes and re- 
sults, we are confidently certain ; but in the 
j)ress of action, in the urgency of momentous 
experience, much is always confused and even 
contradictory to eye-witness itself or to imme- 
diate recollection. There are disputes about 
the statistics of the battle of Waterloo ; but no 
one doubts that there was a battle of Water- 
loo, and that it was the end of the Napoleonic 
domination of Europe. 

After Moses — after anybody — has come 
to see that the great matters illustrated in 
the outside event are true ; that God's work 
upon the earth and in human lives is the 
making of good and the destruction of evil ; 
that the one has in it the law of eternal life, 
and the other the law of eternal death ; that 
the Lord will not lose nor waste a particle of 



54 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

the good, in the race or in the individual 
soul ; that every right-doing puts a man on the 
side of God and his infinite power ; that all 
" the steps of a good man are ordered by the 
Lord ; " that the thoughts of truth and wisdom 
in a man's mind are whisperings directly to 
him out of the Eternal Thought and Know- 
ledge ; — what else, in comparison, signifies 
the question whether an earthly event and 
experience were remembered and reported 
with unerring accuracy and complete under- 
standing from remotest age, — from behind 
and during and after a Deluge which swept 
away men and the traces of men, except a 
small remnant of a tribe or family, — or some 
points were left open to a doubt or a con- 
jecture? Do we get the story of a shipwreck 
or a railway disaster of last week with such 
precision from the survivors as seems to be 
demanded here ? 

That evil, corrupted life was swept away, in 
a great region of the earth, and an evil time 
brought to an end that a fresh and better 
might begin; that some lives, with the good 
yet living and possible in them, were spared 
and separated for this new Genesis ; that 
God's Thought works in human thought, and 



THE DELUGE 55 

that He leads and teaches and provides and 
prevents ; that, above all, his own Heart is 
filled with the very feeling, in a divine entire- 
ness, that man's knows faintly and in part, — 
so that the pain of a man is but a small sign 
of something that thrills the Almighty Spirit, 
and that Almightiness itself is set to heal and 
turn to peace — these are the inward facts 
that are set before the mere story, in the very 
order of the telling. We come to them be- 
fore we come to a single word about the ark, 
and the strange paii^ing of living creatures, by 
sevens and by twos, and the forty days and 
forty nights of tempest and flood, and the cov- 
ering of all the hills fifteen cubits deep, and 
the perishing of all living substance except 
that in the ark, where the Lord had put it 
for safety by the hand of Noah, and himself, 
with his own hand, had " shut him in." 

Every here and there is a wonderful word of 
parable in these old statements of God's deal- 
ing with men in outside providences. " The 
Lord shut him in." He showed Noah just 
one thing to do, one way and place to take 
and enter, and He " shut him in." It is a 
safe and beautiful thing when the Lord shuts 
one in, leaving no doubt or wandering, or even 



56 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

escape, possible. The child knows then that 
he is under the controlling hand of the Pather, 
and has only to lie still and wait His time ; 
to " humble himself under the mighty hand of 
God, that in due time He may exalt him." 
" Eest in the Lord," — in the place where He 
puts you, even when He shuts you in, — the 
Bible keeps telling us, all through ; " and 
He shall give you the desires of your heart." 
Not the desires of your mistaken imagination, 
— not the freedom and ease you might like 
for the moment, — but the real heart and life 
desire and need, which these passing wishes 
erroneously represent ; the real desire of his 
own Heart, which in you is your true instinct 
toward eternal life. 

We lose these beautiful words of the Word 
when we puzzle and argue, and strive to 
reconcile, or to justify ourselves in rejecting, 
the fragmentary and necessarily incomplete 
annal of events, which is made their vehicle. 
" The letter killeth ; the spirit giveth life." 
We want to find from the Bible what God's 
Truth was in the hearts of men, longer ago 
than we can look for any carefully collated 
and authenticated particulars of what happened 
to them day by day, or age by age. 



THE DELUGE 57 

With this clear purpose, we shall find our- 
selves constantly and intuitively reading be- 
tween the lines, — we shall find, without 
dictation, the spiritual correspondence, as the 
men did who learned it by living it, and Avho 
were the Believers of the Bible. 

We shall see that whether the whole globe 
was submerged or not ; whether all life every- 
where was destroyed, or only a local deluge 
swept what was known to the few survivors 
as the " whole earth ; " whether the wisdom 
and foresight of the ark-building was a spe- 
cial, mysterious disclosure to Noah, or given 
to him through the natural channel of his 
human perceptions ; whether his plan seem- 
ingly evolved from his own mental effort 
and invention, or was " commanded " him by 
a voice external to his self - consciousness ; 
whether the gathering signs of the atmos- 
phere and season, or the direct warning of 
God, apprised him that the great water win- 
dows of heaven would soon be opened, and 
the rivers would burst their bounds and rush 
and spread until the whole countryside should 
be as a sea, in which everything would per- 
ish : whether he gathered of his family and of 
the living creatures upon which human life 



58 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

depended, so far as was possible to him, into 
the great vessel three hundred cubits long and 
fifty wide, and thirty high, with one window 
and one door ; or whether all the fauna of 
Asia, as the legend seems to relate, found a 
way in and room to stay — what need to 
trouble about, since we can never definitively 
certify nor explain what is meant? Why 
not take the story just as Moses found and 
took it, — rough, primitive, broken, patched 
with different versions, graphically startling in 
some extremes of statement, after the manner 
of human repetitions, — yet nevertheless the 
conveyance of a fact ; the assurance of a stu- 
pendous something which surely did happen, 
and behind and in whose happening was the 
working of the mighty purpose which created 
and controls the world and man, ahuays for 
good^ and ahuays against evil? 

How can we fail to see that this was what 
Moses found in it, and that this was the 
wheat which he gathered and garnered up, 
whatever remaining chaff of its first outgrown 
growth yet clung about it ? That this is the 
chief thing he believed about it all, and held 
worth while in preserving the record, is sim- 
ply plain. 



THE DELUGE 59 

A great Destruction caioe, and a special sal- 
vation was provided. The man who walked 
with God and received his commandment, and 
"-"did according to all that God commanded 
him," had his way shown to him, and escape 
made : he was shut into a perfect safety while 
"the waters prevailed upon the earth," and 
was borne to a mountain-top, — an island in 
the great deep uplifted from immovable foun- 
dations, to be the centre of a new world for 
him and his descendants. And he " built an 
altar " there, and made a fresh, " clean offer- 
ing " to the Lord ; and the Lord " smelled 
the sweet savor " of it and entered into sol- 
emn " co-venant " — coming together — with 
the man ; meeting his simple sign of faith on 
His own supreme part with a promise : that 
" while the earth should remain, seedtime and 
harvest, summer and winter, should not fail." 

" I will not curse the ground any more for 
man's sake : the imagination of man's heart is 
ewilfrom his youtJi.''^ 

Is it a straining of interpretation to sup- 
pose that this word may be akin to that which 
came to David : " He knoweth our frame ; 
He remembereth that we are dust " ? 

God will not add , any more or needless 



60 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

hardships for us ; He will help us to endure 
and overcome those that are and must be. 
He knows that man is but as in a childhood 
and a youth, — in his mere beginnings, — 
upon the earth. 

Perhaps already the objection may arise 
which is sometimes urged against such oc- 
cult understandings and interpretations of the 
Scriptures : why are the real meanings so 
overlaid and hidden? Why must there be 
such painstaking, such research, such labori- 
ous finding out of something beyond the let- 
ter ? Why are the things we need most to 
know not made directly apparent in simple 
statement ? 

Because they are the hidden, the deep 
things, the things of heart and spirit and of 
spiritual apprehension, that can only be indi- 
cated — not exhaustively set forth — by that 
which is outwardly experienced. Because 
human life is an outcome of essential truth, 
and essential truth must be read back from 
it, and within it. Because all mysteries and 
knowledo'es and faiths are but for the reve- 
lation of the living heart of things, which is 
the Heart of Love, which is the Heart of 



THE DELUGE 61 

God. Can we know God's heart at a glance, 
in a hurry, and does it lie on the outside of 
the things manifest from it ? 

The persons who rebel most readily against 
the need of deep reach and insight in the 
understanding of the Bible will study eagerly 
what later, lesser human writings mean ; 
they cannot search too centrally for the in- 
tents of Dante and Milton, of Shakespeare 
and Browning : a new reading, a fresh sig- 
nificance, is hailed with enthusiasm, with 
exultation ; cleverness, and the delight of 
apprehension, are proved and gratified ; the 
greatest poets are often measured as great- 
est by their obscurities, which are taken for 
granted as profundities. Underneath it all 
is a strong, latent satisfaction in the truth 
that it takes somewhat of genius to compre- 
hend Genius. Even so, " the things of the 
Spirit are spiritually discerned." If we can 
see them, onl}^ in a little, we are glad, because 
we find that our own souls can breathe the 
heavenly air : we, too, are spiritually alive. 

It is not what any story tells us, merely as 
a story, that moves our thought and feeling, 
centrally ; it is the human nature, experience, 
want, hope, sympathy, that it stirs within us ; 



62 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

it is the realizing sense of what may be, and is, 
in human life, and the promise and possibil- 
ity of it ; it is the strengthening for our own 
need which we get from the history of others ; 
their endurings, helps, leadings, rescues, sal- 
vations. This is what hands stories down, 
not merely from lip to lip, but from heart to 
heart. They are all representations, para- 
bles ; as such the meaning behind them is 
the thing we look for, whether consciously or 
not. It is what the patriarchs felt in the sig- 
nificance of their old-family traditions ; it is 
what they told them for, from father to son ; 
it is what Moses found in them, and believed, 
and indorsed, and went on to understand 
God's further revelation by, — and so, now 
that they have come down to us, it is but the 
simplest, most direct apprehension, and no 
mystical wresting or changing, to take the 
text as the envelope of an innermost truth ; 
just as true to-day as it was when Abraham 
sat in his tent door and told the old tales 
over to the boy Isaac, the son of his old age, 
and made known to hiai his own certainty of 
the wonderful covenant-making of the Lord 
God with himself, when the Word came to 
him in an intimate, personal revelation, an 



THE DELUGE 63 

" appearing " of the Most Higli, saying to 
him, " I am the Almighty God ; walk before 
me, and be thou perfect ; and I will make my 
covenant between me and thee, and will mul- 
tiply thee exceedingly." And when Abram 
fell upon his face, listening with a holy fear 
and awe, " God talked with him," he told his 
child, and said to him yet more clearly, 
" Behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou 
shalt be a father of many nations." We shall 
come to this presently, when in the Mosaic 
record we find the oris^in and basis of all 
Hebrew faith in the great Belief of Abraham. 

Before we leave the lesson of the Ark, how- 
ever, we may surely interpret it into our own 
lives, as the patriarchs and Moses did into 
theirs, and on the same lines of distinct in- 
sight and assured personal trust. 

The Lord will help every one of us to build 
his ark ; and to the safety of it He will him- 
self shut each man in. The environment of 
life surrounds us with limit, hindrance, shel- 
ter ; and on the great waters of the flood of 
being and event. He will cause us to be borne 
to the Mountain of His Rest. 

He will shut us in with our own ; in home 
and family He will protect and save us, and 



64 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

bring us together to the Land of tlie New Be- 
ginning. All that ministers and belongs to 
our true life shall be saved with us, and shall 
come forth, with old, familar dearness and 
use, after the death - deluge, upon the new 
earth, under the new heavens. All the length 
and breadth and depth and height of our ex- 
perience, through which we are to come to our 
full and final and safe possession, are minutely 
ordered and adapted by himself. He puts 
the building, as it seems to us, into our own 
hands : but He provides, directs, measures for 
us, all the way through. If we follow his 
plan, obey his word, our ark is a sure abiding 
and a certain survival. If we choose rather 
to drift on without Him, we are swept into 
wild waters, and, for the time being, perish. 

Our ark is to be of " gopher-wood ; " the 
wood of the hard, century - enduring, ever- 
green and living tree ; that does not lose its 
leafage, — that is full of a rich, conserving, 
purifying, sweet-breathing balsam. Pine, — 
fir, — cypress, — cedar, — of whatever variety 
the "gopher-wood" may have been, it belonged 
to this sweet, noble order ; typical of every- 
thing strong, calm, beautiful, precious, and 
long-lasting. 



THE DELUGE 65 

" Witliin and without," the Ark was to be 
" pitched " with the fragrant resin of the tree, 
to keep the waters out, and the strength in- 
tact ; it was the essential principle, joining, 
keeping sound, defending the whole structure. 

One window, o;?e?^ U'pti^ard^ was to light it 
all ; one door, for going out or coming in, was 
to be provided ; there was to be neither access 
nor egress otherwise than divinely permitted 
and commanded ; and the door was to be set 
in the side, serving the three levels and par- 
allels of the " stories." This is unstrained 
suggestion of the three levels, or " degrees," 
of human being and relation, — the natural, 
the spiritual, the celestial ; the three entrances 
and outlets of the Life given unto man. 

Is this " mysticism " in the sense of the un- 
real? Or is not all that is vitally real most 
surely mystical, in the sense of reaching into 
and drawing from the secret and sacred ? 

All life, and all food for life, are gathered 
into every man's ark, share for share, repre- 
sentatively. There is nothing God has made 
upon the earth that is not made for every soul, 
in its portion and degree. It may be but 
imprisoned, scarcely known or accounted of, 
for the interval : but it is there ; it is all wait- 



66 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

ing to be set free ; it is for food, use, pleasure, 
in the great coming, fulfilling time. When 
everything outside in the earth shall perish, 
something of all shall have remained, been 
housed, stored up, for the restoration; and 
all, in a new increase and abundance, shall be 
given again to men. 

Out of the window of the Ark goes forth, 
first, the raven ; the strong-winged bird, eager 
and seeking ; the confident expectation that 
keeps its unfaltering flight to and fro about 
the Ark, above the waters, until the waters are 
dried away. And then the tender dove may 
be let loose, — the loving hope, the timorous 
desire ; and she finds at first no visible rest, 
but returns into her old shelter and patience ; 
then she goes forth again, and lo ! the young 
olive branch, in its pale, fresh green, stirs in 
the gentle wind that breathes over the un- 
covered hillside, and the new, cleansed earth 
is reborn to the eternal light ! 

If there is anything in this different from 
what Moses, and Abraham, and the Hebrew 
people as children of the living God, must 
have felt in their hearts and believed and 
found their help in, when they heard and told 



THE DELUGE 67 

again the story of the Flood, and the Ark, and 
the Mountain of Rest and Regeneration, we 
may, if we will, call the tale a useless fable, 
and reject its authority ; but if our own hearts 
find and feel it full of this reality, it is to us 
the Testimony, and we need not trouble nor 
cavil about mechanical details, or uncertainties 
of verbal representation. For why was fable 
ever invented, but to convey something so in- 
finitely and intensely true that no mere single, 
literal history can hold or exj)ress it all ? 

Christ spoke in parables ; the world was 
built in parables ; human history goes on in 
parables, of which each separate chronicle 
holds a meaning for the race. And all these 
things are so enshrined, that in due time they 
may come forth ; as the facts of Creation 
come forth to human knowledge from their 
safe sepulture in the silent, age-worn rocks. 

" Ye shall know, if ye follow on to know 
the Lord." 

" What I do, thou knowest not now, but 
thou shalt know hereafter." 

" I have man}^ things to say unto you, but 
ye cannot bear them now. The Spirit shall 
bring all things to your remembrance." 

" He that is instructed imto the kingdom of 



68 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

heaven is like unto an houseliolder, which 
bringeth forth out of his treasure things new 
and old." 

Old Parson Robinson said it to the Holland 
Pilgrims. " There is yet great light to break 
forth from the word of God." And the chil- 
dren of the Pilgrims, through their very in- 
herited loyalty to the Word, and its letter as 
infolding the Word, may blessedly find it so, 
in face of all radical overthrow and shallow 
contempt. 

So, the deeper we look into the primitive 
formations of human thought, the grander, 
more interior, vital meanings and revelations 
we shall discern ; not by arbitrary or fanciful 
constructions, but by simple inseeing, and 
the recognition of the unity of the particular 
form with the larger spiritual reality. 

There is still a more profound meaning, 
therefore, than we have yet touched in this 
study, in the testimony of the Ark ; we find it 
if we reverse the word, and say — as was said 
later — the Ark of the Testimony. For it is 
there, already, hidden in the story of Noah, 
and his building under the instruction of God. 

He could never — no man can ever — build 
an outside ark, unless he had the Ark inside 



THE DELUGE 69 

him. The pattern of things must always be 
in the heavens. 

In the inmost heaven of a man's soul is a 
centre God makes for himself. It is the " Ark 
of the Co-veniint ; " the Place of the Coming- 
Together of Gocl and the man ; the " secret 
place of the Most High ; " the " closet " man 
enters into when with '* shut door " he holds 
connnunion with his Maker. It is the place 
that may not be profaned ; the " house of 
prayer " that may not be made " a den of 
thieves." 

This is where God gives a man from himself, 
his individual nature ; where He says to him, 
" I have called thee by thy name ; thou art 
mine." It is where all real Thought and Con- 
sciousness begin ; the vital point of union be- 
tween the Infinite and the finite ; from which 
lesser thoughts, knowledges, and their ulti- 
mations flow forth, which seem to the man his 
own thinkings and life. It is the centre fi'om 
which only he is truly alive. When he abides 
in the mere outer senses of his mind, believing 
them all his own and all of himself, cutting 
off from heavenly source and consciousness, — 
making ^\2ij-things of his separated fancies 
and self -impulses, — he confuses and perplexes 



70 THE MORAL BEGINNINGS 

all the true relation of his living. He departs 
from God, and begins to die. The branch is 
lopped off from the tree, and slowly perishes. 

So, — let us read through the parable, and 
remember, — it was out of the Ark of God's 
Rest within him that "Noah" — the man 
whose name was "Rest" — ^ built the outer 
vessel that bore his life, and the lives that 
were of his own and his full inheritance of 
being from the Lord, unto "Ararat," — the 
" Holy Land," —the Mountain of God's Holy 
Presence, and man's final Rest in Him. 

One word — one interpretative key — is 
set throughout to the unlocking of the succes- 
sive doors of the whole grand revelation. 



PART III 

THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 



CHAPTER I 

THE LIGHT OF THE LmXG 

^^HAT Abraham believed comes into the 
Mosaic record. It came into the life of Moses ; 
it was the root of the belief of Moses. 

In the third generation from Shem, the eld- 
est son of Xoah, according to the genealogy 
in Genesis, the great " dividing of the earth," 
and the scattering of the multiplied families 
abroad to make new centres, — yet always in 
families^ though the nation was broken up, 
and its very language confused into dialects, — 
took place. 

The one great people, using all its material 
resources together, had grown powerful and 
daring ; it thought by material force to reach 
and possess not onl}'" the earth, but by force 
and progress to build itself up into the very 
heaven ; to lay hold of the very sources of 
power. 



72 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

Is the story of the Tower of Babel any whit 
different from the story of any earthly build- 
ing since, in any age, even ' our own, when 
achievement in the natural and tangible makes 
men bold to say, " Go to : we are coming into 
the command of all things ; all things are ours 
by the conquering of our intellect and strength ; 
there is no spiritual or unknown absolutely 
beyond our attainment by brave, persistent 
climbing on steps of the actual, the practical ; 
we can ascend into what has been supposed 
the mystical, the super-sensible, by firm foot- 
hold on the positive, the concrete ; there is no 
other loay on^ or uj) f " We build towers upon 
solid earth, and say it is the sole foundation ; 
forgetting that God set the earths themselves 
afloat on the invisible ; that He has hung the 
round world in an intangible infinity, that so 
by the word of his will only it shall be upheld 
and moved. 

No wonder if in the rude ages men thought 
to scale the unreachable by a huge physical 
structure piled upward from the ground and 
making foothold into heaven. It was the 
same presumption of grasping the eternal and 
controlling it in the sensuous and apparent. 
Babel and the Pyramids are the crude witness 



THE LIGHT OF THE LIVING 73 

of the Past ; the dynamo and the electric wire 
are the testimony of to-day. They climbed ; 
we penetrate. They sought to set foot beyond 
earth-boundaries ; we to lay our hands upon 
the secret motive force of things, and wield 
and steer the planet. 

On the low, flat, rockless plain they made 
their essay; with false, imperfect, crumbling 
substance ; bricks, — their own poor mould- 
ing and contrivance, — instead of everlasting 
stones ; and slime — the mere ooze and mud 
of earthliness — to hold their work together, 
instead of the strong cementing of the rock- 
particles themselves, slaked with a pure, living 
water. 

And God looked upon their futile work. 
" The Lord came down to see the city and the 
tower, which the children of men builded." 

And He said : " This is their one united 
thought and purpose ; they are the whole, 
single human strength, with a single, mis- 
taken human thought ; and this is the thing 
that they will do. They are of one common 
speech, one common wish ; but they do not 
tridy, inwardly understand ; therefore the out- 
ward, seeming understanding shall be broken 
up." 



74 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

God works by Law ; by fulfilling law, and 
not by breaking it. By its own inherent 
weakness, the mutual word and counsel con- 
cerning their false undertaking fell into dire 
confusion ; in their very language they be- 
came unintelligible to each other. It is the 
way of the False : the miracle of the True is 
that each man hears in his own tongue the 
Word that is spoken. What is more unin- 
telligible than human speech without identi- 
cal comprehension ? They drifted away from 
their own centre ; they " scattered " them- 
selves " upon the face of the earth." The 
text says, " the Lord did scatter them abroad : " 
so He did, just as He " hardened Pharaoh's 
heart ; " by the inevitable working of moral, 
spiritual cause and effect. 

And so, from Shinar, the augmented mul- 
titude of the tribes, too vast to keep longer 
in one commonwealth, dispersed itself abroad 
through Asia ; and still the generations of the 
families went on, and the peoples grew ; and 
in various quarters and divisions established 
themselves separately, and by separate in- 
fluences grew farther and farther apart, and 
strange, — the one folk from the other, — in 
tongue, in habits, in thought and theory, and 



THE LIGHT OF THE LIVING 75 

in the practical ordering and expression of 
life. 

Four generations succeeded, after this divi- 
sion, — from Peleg to Terali ; in the fifth, we 
find the son of Terah, Abram ; born a Chal- 
dean, living with his father Terah and his 
wife Sarai, in Haran, Mesopotamia. 

And now we come to what we are looking 
for, — the Faith of Abraham. 

It was in him before the " new name," with 
the great Promise in it, was given to him ; 
when he was simply and grandly, Ahram^ 
^'"father of height. ^^ One asks what this can 
mean of him, other than that he reached, in 
his faith toward God, his conscious " walking 
with Him," the height of human nature ; a 
life in which man's sonship to the Divine in- 
herits all, and can but become father, handed 
down of the same life and inheritance, to the 
multitude who shall follow in his line, and be- 
lieve after him, and " walk," also, " before 
God in the light of the living." 

Abram believed that God leads the indi- 
vidual man ; concerns himself with individual 
hopes and needs ; appoints to the single soul 
its way, and brings every son of his as by the 
hand, into " the land that He will show him." 



16 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

To him God clearly " appeared." The Di- 
vine word came down into his thought, his 
heart ; he had not to pierce heaven for it, nor 
go down into the deep. It was with him ; 
nigh to him ; in his own hearing, in his own 
mouth. The things that made themselves 
felt within him were the impulses of God's 
Will in his behalf ; before he could think, for 
himself, the thoughts were in God for him. 
When his thinking — in this faith, under this 
leading — took word, it was the speech of 
God, and he listened. 

" It is not in man that walketh, to direct 
his steps." He knew this. And hnowing it, 
— and loohing above himself, — he saw the 
sign ; he was sure of his path. " Thine ears 
shall hear a word behind thee, saying. This 
is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the 
right hand, and when ye turn to the left." 
Listening and believing, watching and obey- 
ing, never hasty with his own impetuous 
reason and desire, but waiting for the certain 
counsel of the Spirit, he began that intimate 
fellowship with the One Invisible and True, 
which all the emblem-worship of fire and sun 
and star taught by Chaldean seers could never 
realize. 



THE LIGHT OF THE LIVING 11 

And with tliis in his heart, and as a com- 
mandment in his ears, he went forth from 
Haran with his wife and his nephew, and his 
people ; childless, but believing that some- 
how, whether he had child or no, the word of 
God to him should be true, — " In thee shall 
all families of the earth be blessed." To do 
God's errand, God's way, whether he could 
see through it or not, — this was the faith, 
this the obedience, of " faithful Abraham." 
It was the self-same thing that Saint Paul, in 
the new Dispensation, preached as the "life 
by the faith of the Son of God," who had 
been fully manifested in the flesh ; writing to 
the Galatians all that beautiful, urgent expos- 
tulation of the third chapter of his epistle, 
concerning the receiving of the Spirit, and 
the " hearing of faith," — *' even as Abraham 
believed God," and " before the gospel " was 
told of Him, " In thee shall all nations of the 
earth be blessed." 

" So then," he declares, " they which be of 
faith are blessed with faithful Abraham." 



CHAPTER II 

CONSECRATION AND SACHIFICE 

This being the faith of Abraham concern- 
ing God, as the Giver and Director of all 
life and circumstance, — as the Lord of Hosts 
because the Lord and Leader of each sep- 
arate, conscious soul, and no other possible 
way ; — that He is indeed the Life and the 
Surrounding ; that what we have learned to 
call Environment is simply the compassing 
about, the preventing, the following, of the 
one Eternal, living Spirit, according to the 
laws of an infinitely comprehending love and 
wisdom, in all things that concern and befall a 
man ; — there was directly involved with such 
belief a corresponding sense of man's side of 
the relation ; a perception that human life is 
the " coming-together," or " co-venant " of God 
and man, the Soul creating and the soul cre- 
ated, in an experience given to each individual 
as a sole, peculiar illustration from among the 
infinite possibilities of an infinite being. 



CONSECRATION AND SACRIFICE 79 

God divides himself : He lets each one 
live with Him — as it were, for Him — a piece 
of his life. He shares — deputes — his per- 
sonality. It is the Communion ; the Body 
broken and distributed : the current of his 
own Heart - flow poured into human recep- 
tivity and consciousness. The New Testi- 
mony in Christ has revealed this ; but away 
back in Abraham was a germ given of the 
glorious faith, and a dim resulting concep- 
tion of man's due and blessed share in the 
accorded relation. This latter formed itself 
to the understanding and conscience of Abra- 
ham in two leading ideas and claims of right- 
eousness on his own part, as answering to 
such grand, condescending Righteousness of 
God on his behalf. 

And these were. Consecration and Sacrifice. 

The man's life, taken from God's hand, sus- 
tained and surrounded by his continual gift 
and providence, is a holy, sure, and happy 
thing. It is guaranteed by a promise, and 
the promise is implied from the beginning, 
in the very making of a man in the Maker's 
image, to be a representative of Him, in 
thought and love, in definite power, purpose, 
action. " Every good gift and every perfect 



80 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

gift " was assured already in the miiid of 
Him " with whom is no variableness, neither 
shadow of turning." Yet beyond, and more- 
over, that man might know this mind of God, 
and give himself willingly to its working out, 
the revelation came to him in the strong 
word of the Lord in his very soul : " Surely 
blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I 
will multiply thee." This was the Oath of 
the Immutable ; the solemn covenant under- 
standing that He made with man, in the early 
simplicity in which man was able to hear his 
voice ; "so that by two immutable things, in 
which it was impossible for God to lie," — 
the divine, original act of a Will that never 
retracts, and the word spoken into the human 
spirit, which has repeated itself in the hope 
and expectation of every human spirit since, 
— " we might have a strong consolation, who 
have fled for refuge " from all mortal doubts, 
dismays, and uncertainties, " to lay hold on 
the hope set before us, sure and steadfast, and 
which entereth into that within the veil " of 
all the hidden mysteries. 

Simply inevitable, then, it is, that man's 
part of the covenant should be obedience and 
trust ; a rendering back of life into God's 



CONSECRATION AND SACRIFICE 81 

hand, to shape it as He will ; a self -surrender, 
from the beginning and always, to the Divine 
authority and care. Everything was to be 
sacred ; everything was to be a service, an 
offering. The recognition of this obligation, 
in its two sublime elements, found expression 
with Abraham in outward rite ; the ceremo- 
nial circumcision, and the ceremonial sacri- 
fice. The one was the initial token of the 
other. Both were signs of the one essential 
fact, — that man is God's, and that from first 
to last, from inmost to uttermost, in all the 
power of being and all the outcome of action, 
he is a form of the Will of God ; consciously 
joyful in that Will and in its Force, that are 
lent to him as his own, that he may know so 
much as a single soul in an endless life may 
know, of what God can think and feel and 
do, on the line of one continuous and beau- 
tiful intent and possibility. This is to have 
part in the " manifold wisdom of God ; " to 
be in relation with every other part, and to 
have sympathetic knowledge of all. It is to 
share in the " unsearchable riches of Christ ; " 
to be " heirs of God, and joint heirs with his 
Son ; " to " comprehend with all saints the 
breadth and length and depth and height ; " 



82 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

to " know the love of God which passeth 
knowledge," and to be " filled with all the 
fullness of God." 

" This do in remembrance of me," comes 
to be, in the full revelation, the grand and 
gracious bidding, in every least partaking of 
life, each drop and morsel of particular expe- 
rience, to take something out of the Divine 
Heart and Being into our very own. 

The beginning of such living with God was 
in the faith and obedience of Abraham. It 
was the centre of his belief. What he be- 
lieved, we may safely believe with him ; to the 
f 07^711 and expression of his belief, in detail or 
limitation, we are not bound down. We have 
our teaching of to-day direct from the same 
Spirit that talked with him; in our new cir- 
cumstance, we have our own new showing, as 
truly as he had when he was led out of Haran 
in Mesopotamia, across the Euphrates into the 
country of Canaan. 

So we may go on to read of his interpreta- 
tion and expression of Sacrifice without being 
troubled by his methods or mistakes, — the 
great underlying truth of Sacrifice, or loyal 
rendering up of the very life itself continu- 
ally, being ours, as it was his. And the com- 



CONSECRATION AND SACRIFICE 83 

fort of liis mistakes is, that God set thetn 
right; he was God's man through them all, 
and he was not left alone to the limitations 
of his own outer judgment ; but the inner in- 
spiration and the gentle outer compelling were 
with and around him unfailingly. 

"As the mountains are round about Jeru- 
salem, so the Lord is round about his people 
forever.'^ 

Abraham had but the beginnings of the 
great Belief which is the full knowledge of 
God, and of his Christ in man ; which itself 
is " life eternal." 

Sacrifice and Atonement are simply and 
only the " Co-venant," the Coming-together, 
— the At-one-ment, — of the Holy and the 
Imperfect, wdiich mean the Infinite and the 
incomplete. The Infinite, working always in 
the finite to completion, comes into this life 
of man by degrees, as the human, led and 
trained by God's Providence, can be prepared 
to receive it. And the more can only be 
given in response to the offering of the less. 
It is the living interchange between God and 
man. It is the movement and inter-relation 
of the Father and the Son and the Holy 
Spirit ; the infinite elements and essential 



84 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

relations of the Divine Nature, taking three- 
fold form always in creation and revelation 
from a Threefold Being. 

Father and Son, — Origin and Begetting ; 
Spirit, — the living Power and Proceeding of 
this eternal generation ; the One, and mutual 
Life. 

God is continually making the human out of 
the Divine. We feel, therefore, our conscious 
life in its two parts, the spiritual and the 
natural ; we have soul and body ; we have 
essence and circumstance. 

Sin is the divorce of soul and sense. It is 
a living from the separated inferior half of 
the dual nature. Redemption and restoration 
are the joining of them together again. 

Christ hath broken down the middle wall 
of partition, making the two one. 

The Coming of the Kingdom is the estab- 
lishment of the doing of the Will in heaven 
and in earth. There shall be a new heaven 
and a new earth, wherein shall dwell righteous- 
ness. 

The Heart -sacrifice is the offering of the 
heart-life. The blood of the sprinkling, upon 
the doorposts and garments, is the consecra- 



CONSECRATION AND SACRIFICE 85 

tion of every outside tiling of living, — the 
wearing of all circumstance, wliicli is tlie form- 
raiment of existence, and the goings out and 
comings in in the sight of the Lord, in this 
glad and willing " bloodshedding," which is the 
simple pouring forth along God's channels, in 
his love and service, of the very currents of 
men's being. It is not a casting away, or a 
destruction ; it is a living use and fulfillment. 
This is the true Passion Sign ; the passing 
over of human desire and purpose to the divine 
intent and commandment ; and the Lord's re- 
sponse to it is absolution and remission, — a 
setting free from, and putting utterly away, 
— of the separating evil ; a reconstructing in 
the loholeness which is holiness, of what God 
from the first put together, but man has put 
asunder ; a leading back into the quietness 
and rest of a perfect harmony of the inward 
and the outward. Good-will, — God's-will, — 
is Peace on Earth ; the reconciling of the 
heavenly and everlasting with the circumstan- 
tial and transitory. The apparitions of heaven 
and earth may change, progress, pass away ; 
the Word of God shall not pass away, but 
shall be continually spoken. It shall take 
new, grander, more glorious form, for ever 



86 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

and ever. There shall always be form ; there 
shall always be a land, and a home ; there 
shall be " world without end," though there 
" shall be no more sea," to divide, to dislo- 
cate. For " world " is but the clothing and sub- 
stantiating of the heavenly, ineffable Thought 
of God. There shall be world, — a Word, — 
while God shall continue to think. "In the 
Father's house are many mansions ; " and 
*' we shall dwell in the house of the Lord for- 
ever." 

When wc read of Blood, in the Old Cove- 
nant or in the New, it will relieve all our 
perplexities and set aside all our disputes, if 
we render it, in our understanding, as what 
it truly signifies, — Heart-life. The blood of 
the old sacrifice was the sign, in an extreme 
realism, of this holy offering and surrender of 
life to the Lord. We are " made clean by 
the Blood of Christ," when his Life, by a 
spiritual transfusion, is given into our own, 
and becomes its essential force, its sanctifying, 
holy-making, grace. There is no other redemp- 
tion. All the rest is sign — fulfillment in the 
outward — of this. Christ gave his bodily 
blood, in the perfect and absolute sacrifice, 



CONSECRATION AND SACRIFICE 87 

in man's name, and for man's sake, of the all 
of himself, spirit and body, to his Father. He 
was lifted up, that he might draw all men 
after him. After that, Christ dieth no more; 
death hath no more dominion ; but in natural 
and spiritual, inward and outward, substance 
and sign, heaven and earth, Life^ from God 
the Father and through his Son, flows on, 
triumphant and eternal. 

And this Gospel, this Revelation, this 
Prophecy, is the one grand meaning of all the 
Holy Scripture, Old and New. It is the heart 
of all parable ; it is the reason and interpreta- 
tion of all ordinance. 

Symbolism is language in its essentials. It 
is the expression of the unity of the outer with 
the inner life ; the translation of the spiritual 
by the natural. All speech is an effort toward 
this ; all speech is derived from symbols, which 
are speech. The word of God has gone forth 
into all the world. 

A wonderful thing happened to Abram very 
early in his migration from Mesopotamia to 
Canaan, — from heathendom to the land where 
the light should dwell. After his brave con- 
flict with the four savage kings, the rescue of 
Lot, and the generous fraternizing with the 



88 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

friendly border monarchs, he was met by Mel- 
chizedek, " priest of the most high God," who 
came forth to him bearing bread and wine ; 
the Holy Supper. 

A priest of God is one who feels and inter- 
prets the signs of God ; who can thus handle 
the mysteries of the word of life, and give 
God's message to men. 

Food and drink are sacraments. The re- 
ceiving of them is the receiving, by material 
medium, the Divine Force by which we live 
and grow. To do this consciously and rever- 
ently, is to eat and drink " worthily." 

This daily partaking and outward nourish- 
ing is sign again and continual reminder of 
the way that all things are of God, and of 
Him are made " the power of an endless life " 
to us, in our experience and understanding. 
Bread and wine are circumstance and inspi- 
ration. Circumstance and inspiration are as 
bread and wine. They are body and spirit. 
The one builds up our form of life, — the 
other iniovva.^ it with the conscious thought 
and love and power which from the very Soul 
of God make living souls of us. 

To take the Holy Supper, as God has made 
it and as Christ gave it, is to enter in, con- 



CONSECRATION AND SACRIFICE 89 

sciously, to this direct, continual, dependent, 
happy relation with the Lord God. To make 
sign of it, by the eating of the sacred bread 
and the drinking of the sacred wine, is to espe- 
cially realize and openly confess it. This is 
the Communion Ordinance of the Christian 
Church. 

Melchizedek brought the bread and wine 
to Abram in solemn significance. It was a 
foreshowing of what should be fully declared 
and revealed to all men by Him who is " a 
High Priest forever after the order of Mel- 
chizedek." 

Did Abram know, and believe, all this, at 
that very time? We remember that we are 
searching out what Abraham believed ; what 
it was given him to know of God. But is be- 
lief always formulated? Is intuition always 
translated ? Does the mind always say to 
itself, in word and syllable, what the heart 
apprehends ? 

God always gives us the next thing. Abram 
received in his soul the command and the life 
from God, and then and therefore the sign 
was given him. Something whose fullness 
of meaning should expand afterward to his 
thought, was presented to him in outward 



90 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

ceremony. The possibility of his understand- 
ing — the power of heavenly things — was 
already born in him, as it was in the disci- 
ples, even while they perceived but dimly the 
present word and act of their Lord. " What 
I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt 
know hereafter," is what God continually says 
to us in his highest, deepest parables. Of all 
parables, the parable of food and drink is the 
most intimate, the most evident and continual, 
the most inclusive. It is our satisfying. It 
is daily gift meeting daily want. Bread for 
the building of the body, — wine, or water, 
for the refreshing, recreating of the spirit. 
The body of life is to be God's righteousness ; 
our circumstance is to be act and form after 
his commandment. Goodness is the Good. 
" Nourish us with all goodness," the Church 
prays ; and again, " that our bodies may be 
made clean by his body." And the wine is the 
very inspiration of the Divine ; the innermost, 
vital supplying. " Our souls, washed with 
his most precious blood ; " flooded, regener- 
ated by the tide that from the very Heart of 
Him fills our hearts, and changes them to his 
own nature from all debasements. The " holy 
mysteries " are the " spiritual food " of body 



CONSECRATION AND SACRIFICE 91 

and blood, by whicli we are " made members 
incorporate in the mystical Body of Christ, 
which is the blessed company of all faithful 
people." 

And these " holy mysteries " are in our 
common daily partaking ; the rite is but the 
symbol, the reminder. True ritualism makes 
all living a Sacrament. 

As a common refreshment, Melchizedek 
offered the bread and the wine to Abram ; his 
very offering of it so was its everlasting sig- 
nificance. 



CHAPTER III 

THE MISTAKE OF ABRAHAM 

The Hebrew Patriarch was a man ; subject, 
therefore, to limitation and mistake. From 
the simplest natural life he was just brought 
into the beginning of the spiritual ; how should 
he at once see all things absolutely and in 
their full and final relation? He was great 
in the power of faith, but in the infancy of its 
development. In his expression of belief, he 
might easily fall into an error. What would 
the Bible be to us, if the Believers of whom 
it is the Record halted in no partialities of 
understanding, made no misapplication of the 
truth, in their endeavor to grasp its complete- 
ness and to bring it to daily form and practice ? 
We should simply not be able as human be- 
ings to accept the story. We should say. It 
is a myth, a dream, a fable of Utopia. We 
should be further from recognizing the Rev- 
elation that is in it than we are now, when we 
stumble at the literal chronicles of spiritual 



THE MISTAKE OF ABRAHAM 93 

experience, and at tlie flaws of character and 
of judgment that warped the divine intent and 
commandment to narrow uses and applications ; 
or that even debased them with unworthy sub- 
terfuge, thinking so to carry out God's su- 
preme purpose and — anticipating the later 
corruption of the Christian Church — to jus- 
tify the means by the end. There was all this 
admixture of the fallible with the infallible in 
the day of Abraham, which has continued to 
be until our own. " We have the treasure in 
earthen vessels." Shall w^e therefore castaway 
the vessel, treasure and all ? 

Abraham was born and trained a Chaldean. 
He had been used to the worship of the ele- 
ments ; he had witnessed the horrible rites of 
human sacrifice. Out of this he had come to 
the knowledge that God is a Spirit, the cre- 
ating Force of the visible elements ; and to 
the perception that a sacrifice to Him can be 
no infliction of pain and death upon helpless 
vicarious victims, but must be the giving of 
one's onm. Something out of a man's own 
life, — his dearest and best, — his very life 
itself, if demanded, — must be offered up, in 
sign and ])roof that the man is wholly God's. 
Abraham got thus far out of the old pagan 



94 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

darkness and violence. He brought down — • 
or it was given to him to apprehend and 
apply — the idea of sacrifice to the individual 
concern of every soul with its Maker ; a some- 
thing that lay between the Lord God and his 
child ; a rendering up, out of special personal 
life, a gift to the Giver ; a testimony of in- 
most, uttermost human witness to the supreme 
testifying of the Eternal Spirit. 

Of his flocks, of his herds, of the work of 
his hands ; of his desires, his affections ; of 
his purposes, acts, choices ; of all that was his, 
of all that was himself, — the best, the strong- 
est, the cleanest, — was offering to be made. 
This was sacrifice ; this was making sacred ; 
this was, in everything, " Holiness to the 
Lord." And this it was in Abraham's heart 
to do. 

Was there anything that he could not re- 
linquish ? Was there anything too good, too 
dear, to give up to God? This searching 
problem faced him with its deep demand, as it 
has in all ages faced the earnest, devout, self- 
scrutinizing spirit. And Abraham answered 
within himself, " I*must give to the Lord my 
son, even my son Isaac." 

God let him think so. It was true. He 



THE MISTAKE OF ABRAHAM 95 

must give his best love, in all perfect consecra- 
tion ; he must give his son — by all example, 
counsel, motive, training — to the Divine 
Hand and Will, to make of and through them 
whatsoever that Power and Purpose would. 
This was the word of God, away down in the 
secret being of the man, out of which the 
fancied message came ; in coming up thence 
it took shape in the man's fashion of thought, 
in the mind-working that he had only thus far 
grown to ; and he thought he heard God say, 
" Lay thy son Isaac upon the altar. Give up 
his life to me. Slay him with the knife, and 
burn him with the fire." 

And Abraham took the knife, and laid the 
wood upon the shoulders of the boy Isaac, and 
led him up into the mountain. 

But when he had builded the altar, and piled 
the wood, and bound his child uj)on it for the 
sacrifice, the true voice came out of the inner 
heaven to his soul, — '''•Lay not thy hand nj)on 
the lad!'' 

And Abraham looked — behind him ; and 
lo ! a ram caught in a thicket by the horns. 

Back — into his own life — into motive, 
spirit, influence ; into the hard shaping of old, 
false, cruel teaching ; into the thicket of per- 



96 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

plexities, the tangle of selfish hopes and true 
devotions, propitiatory desire and fervor of 
real renunciation, — God made him look, and 
see where was the coarse, brutal, hard thing 
in himself, that must be slain ; not the sweet, 
tender, natural human affection, but the dis- 
torted motive with its twisted, torturing horns, 
the secret evil greed, the disguised sin, that 
must be renounced, destroyed, in the name of 
the Lord God, and for the sake of his beau- 
tiful righteousness. It was the first, half- 
comprehended whisper of the interior, heav- 
enly significance of all ritual offering, of all 
outward surrender, which alone makes oblation 
holy ; it was the first stirring of the new sense, 
the hidden interpretation of typical require- 
ment ; it was the beginning of what David 
came to know and declare as commandment : 
" Stand in awe, and sin not. Offer the sacri- 
fices of righteousness, and put your trust in 
the Lord." " Thou desirest not sacrifice ; thou 
delightest not in burnt offering ; the sacrifices 
of God are a hrohen " (significantly in the He- 
brew passive, — not se{/'-shattered) " spirit ; a 
broken and a contrite " (again in the passive, — 
one that has suffered bruising) " heart, O God, 
thou wilt not despise." The accepting of pain, 



THE MISTAKE OF ABRAHAM 97 

that comes by God's permission, in the way 
of obedience ; not the seeking, the assump- 
tion, of suffering, for any merit's sake. Abra- 
ham had a far, faint foreshowing of this, the 
"full, perfect, and sufficient satisfaction" of 
the Christ, who " when He cometh into the 
world, saith. Sacrifice and offering thou would- 
est not ; but a body " — a way and form of 
life — " thou hast prepared me : lo, I come to 
do thy will, O God." 

All the way between Abraham and Jesus 
was continued the sign, and all the way was 
repeated the experience, that only with pain, 
only with giving up, in the mere body of life, 
can the spirit of life be made regnant. All 
the way from the coming of Clu^ist, and the 
suffering of Christ in the flesh, to the coming 
again " without sin unto salvation," must the 
experience go on. There is always to be an 
altar in the earth ; under " the golden altar 
that is before God " in heaven, are the souls 
of them who have suffered, and who ask, How 
long, O Lord, is it to be ? ^Tearing their white 
robes, they are bidden to " rest yet for a little 
season, until their fellow servants and their 
brethren that should be killed as they were, 
should he fulfilled.'" 



98 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

It is the sign ; it is the mystery. The 
" glory that shall be revealed " alone can ex- 
plain it. But we need mistake nothing. We 
are to court no suffering ; to refuse no pure 
happiness ; to outrage no truth of our nature. 
We are to slay nothing but the ram in the 
thicket. We are not to impose or to inflict 
upon ourselves ; we are to leave our discipline 
to God ; we are to bear only that to which we 
are called ; to " humble ourselves under the 
mighty hand of God, that He may exalt us in 
due time.'''' 

The secret of the old ceremonial, done away 
in Christ, is the secret of the tender chastise- 
ment — the pure leading or even driving — of 
Him who himself is "touched with the feel- 
ing of our infirmities," — "wounded for our 
transgressions, bruised for our iniquities." 

Something of this lovely relation of the hu- 
man to the Divine — this submissive, trusting, 
obeying sonship — was revealed to Abraham. 

" Your father Abraham," said Jesus to the 
Jews, " rejoiced to see my day ; and he saw it, 
and was glad." 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PATRIAKCHAL CHARACTER 

Between the revelation of the faith to 
Abraham and its development by Moses, lies 
the story of the lives in which this faith was 
doing its primitive work. 

We must remember that it was primitive. 

Abraham believed God. 

Yet even in his highest faith he fell into 
mistake. 

Abraham believed God as close beside him ; 
in his daily common life. He believed in the 
Angel of the Presence. 

Nevertheless, in daily, common life, he failed, 
went wrong. 

Yes ; just as we do. Therein lies our com- 
fort, even to this day of what should be our 
larger, deeper faith. 

Therein surely lay the comfort and the hope 
of the generations after Abraham, and before 
the Christ, who as men called Abraham father, 
claimed the Promise, and believed that yet in 
the line of Abraham should " all nations of 
the earth be blessed." 



100 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

The faith of Abraham was in him the he- 
ginning of righteousness. It is the beginning 

— the first creation and the only source — of 
righteousness in us. 

It was " counted to him for righteousness." 
God accredits beforehand. He " imputes " 
that which shall be. This was what Paul 
found out, as the secret of " faith and works ; " 
the saving, — the making sound, — in inmost 
principle and power, by one ; the ultimating, 

— the beautiful, perfect, eternal evolution, in 
the other. 

The one is the "moving of the Spirit of 
God upon the face of the waters." The other 
is the lovely, orderly creation; the appearing 
in things visible of the inmost Word. 

It comes by degrees. First, the Light. 
Then the things that live in the light. 

God is not impatient with his creation. He 
takes the long six days to work it out in. On 
the seventh He will rest, and say that it is 
good. 

Abraham undeniably had his weak human 
side, and its human contradictions. On the 
one hand were his visions of the Divine, in 
which he was exalted to be the "friend of 



THE PATRIARCHAL CHARACTER 101 

God." On the other, he was but the Arab 
herdsman, the chief of a small wandering 
company, the husband of Sarah, a man envi- 
roned with dangers, and living on the alert ; 
driven, it seemed to himself, sometimes to sub- 
terfuges ; afterward, in perplexing domestic 
circumstances, to the cruel repudiation of a 
woman and child — the child his own — who 
were heli^lessly dependent upon him. 

Do we take these things as part of the lioly 
story, — as sacred, and to be justified to all 
extreme because they are the doing of a man 
chosen by the Lord ? Or are we to reject the 
belief that the Lord chooses and abides by 
any human life at all ? 

It was jDrecisely out of these things that the 
man was chosen. 

And what are we, that we may dare to 
judge? How far have we got beyond Abra- 
ham, even now, with our expediences and di- 
23lomacies, our laxities and rigidities, tolerances 
and intolerances, national, social, personal ? 
Yet, is there no truth — no vision — among 
us? 

God taught a great thing to Abraham, by a 
great and terrible event.- Straight to the very 



102 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

question the lesson went. Shall the evil — 
the ignorance — the debasement — upon the 
earth be reckoned without or against the good ? 
Shall the evil be visited and condemned, and 
the good not be s]3ared, reserved? Which 
shall be real, and endure, — the hindrance of 
unrighteousness, — of imperfection, even, — or 
the testimony of absolute uprightness ? Which 
shall be final and universal, — the grovel and 
trail of the serpent upon the ground, or the 
attitude of the man before his God ? 

If there be ten true men in a city of thou- 
sands, — if there be one living truth, wel- 
comed and beloved, in the soul of a man, — 
those ten, that truth, shall save the city, shall 
sanctify the life and continue it to its perfec- 
tion. 

Sodom and Gomorrah perished. Lot was 
saved out of the fire alive. 

The fault of Abraham perished with the 
brief circumstance, the frail mortality, of 
Abraham. The faith of Abraham survives, 
a deathless witness, a sure inheritance, for- 
ever. 

"Abraham gave all that he had to his son 
Isaac." He gave him his worldly goods, send- 



THE PATRIARCHAL CHARACTER 108 

ing away the sons of his step-wives " unto the 
east countiy, with gifts." 

He gave the word of his faitli in Jehovah, 
and of God's Promise, to the son through 
whom the promise was to be fulfilled. He 
provided that Isaac should take a wife only 
by the leading of the Lord, and from among 
his own kindred in Mesopotamia, who be- 
lieved also in the One Most High. 

And Isaac received the wife, " fair to look 
upon," Rebekah, apportioned to him by tlie 
sign of God ; and he believed also, after the 
faith of his father, and " intreated tlie Lord," 
in his turn, for the wisli of his soul. 

Withal, Abraham bequeathed to Isaac his 
own imperfections. He handed down to him 
his own possibilities of duplicit}^, his own nar- 
row jDartiality. Isaac sinned against the truth 
precisely as his father had done ; precisely as 
his father had done, he centred all his love un- 
fairly upon one son, leaving Rebekah just as 
unfairly to cling to and scheme for the other. 
In this way, the fault of Abraham did not per- 
ish with his natural life, though with that it 
may have ceased out of himself. 

And in Jacob all once more reappeared, 
with individual modifications, not certainly of 



104 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

an ennobling quality. He was timid, selfish, 
time-serving, cunning. 

Was he altogether different in these points 
of his human nature from the human nature 
of to-day? Are these things yet eliminated 
from the inheritance of the race, in its far- 
down transmission through the ages ? 

Was he at all a favorite of God because of 
them ? Or was he helped of God, through 
simple faith, against them and in spite of 
them, to their overcoming ? 

Were his shifts and contrivances, his over- 
reachings, his crafts, any more incongruous 
with his spiritual fervors than the same things 
are to-day in the world of policies and shrewd- 
nesses that is held as separate from the world 
of religious thought, observance, and even 
emotion, and confessed as " secular " ? Is 
Jacob's Bethel any more a falsity and mock- 
ery in his life than are our own church spires 
that bristle all over a land given wildly, in 
another order and allowance, to the rushing 
greed, monopoly, self-seeking, of thousands of 
Jacobs eager only after their individual own ? 

What right have we to object to a begin- 
ning of faith that had to deal with such ele- 
ments in the human soul, and after nearly 



THE PATRIARCHAL CHARACTER 105 

four thousand years has still to deal with 
them? 

Nevertheless, the Church of God is in our 
midst, and in every believing man, as it was 
in the heart of Jacob ; and it will save us 
yet. 

Do we not need, in the spiritual history of 
the race, just such a showing of what God will 
do with just such a crude, mixed, warped, and 
vacillating human nature ? Do we not need 
the great, merciful word to be spoken to ws, 

— "I am the Lord ; I change not ; therefore 
ye sons of Jacob are not consumed " ? 

Just because of the poor and pitiful part of 
his character, and its need, — that is ours also, 

— there is no sentence in all the blessed Scrip- 
ture more dear and beautiful to us than this, 
— "' The God of Jacob is thy refuge " ! 

If Jacob, before he became Israel^ thought, 
in his narrow feebleness, that God's care of 
him was a partial, exclusive one, — that there 
was nothing so important to the Divine plan, 
so close to the Divine sympathy, as his own 
little safety and interest, — that does not 
change the fact that this son of Isaac had 
hold of his part of the sure and beautiful 



lOG THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

triitli that '' God is lo\^ng unto every man," 
individually and especially ; that in his heart 
there is a place for each one that none other, 
occupies ; that God's thought goes into every 
detail of every life, and his love feels with 
every touch and throb of every human de- 
sire and pain and gladness. That Jacob only 
learned it as regarded himseK was his own 
limitation, — his o^tl loss. A man cannot 
receive more than he can hold, of whatever 
large and gloriously universal truth. That 
Jacob got what belonged to him, and lived 
his special life in a full faith, is all that we 
can look for in him, and it makes his witness 
just so far sufficient. 

Spiritual life, like the physical, begins with 
a cell-form. Man is a unit. As the proto- 
plasmic cell is a single v:ant^ to which the 
universe is supply and answer, so is the proto- 
soul a single receptacle, truly conscious of 
no other, hardly conscious of itself, — with 
only a self-longing to be filled and satisfied, 
from the DiA'ine that it knows not yet to be 
Divine. 

Even when it has become an organism, and 
man recoo'nizes himself as a beino^ of thouo-ht 
and growth and possibility, he is still a sepa- 



THE PATRIARCHAL CHARACTER 107 

rate man looking to a separata God. All first 
theology is selfish. Man is a baby, claiming 
a mother as all his own, without the faintest 
conception that she is mother to other children 
also. Relifjious theories be^in in like manner. 
They narrow election and salvation to an ac- 
cepted few. 

Each of the old patriarchs chose one child 
out of many, to give all to ; from his own par- 
tiality he came to believe in a partial God. 
This was not radical mistake as to a God at 
all, or his personal presence and providence, 
but only limit to the idea of w^hat God could 
be. 

Israel, as a nation, continued in this par- 
tiality. Holding the grand reality, that God 
was God, and tlieir God, they knew no more 
than to stop there, though the word of the 
Lord kept telling them plainly that He was 
" the God of the whole earth," and that " all 
men should know that He w^as the Lord." 

Li their behalf, they thought ; and got no 
further. The gathering in of the Gentiles, — 
the Gosj)el to a whole waiting world, — the 
" loving the neighbor as one's self," and so 
entering with the great love of the Lord into 
the wide joy of the Lord, — was a thing to 



108 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

come, in the far-off revelation of a time and 
order yet to be. 

We are not obliged to stop where they did. 
To do so would be never to arrive where they 
have long since arrived. To discard their faith 
because it had not all unfolded, would be to 
throw away the only possible beginning of the 
whole and best. 

Even Jacob did attain. He did win from 
his God the new name of Israel. In this his 
experience, one more revelation was made 
manifest than even in the first high faith 
of Abraham — the revelation of redemj)tion. 
That such faith can at last save a man out of 
meanness and falsity and cowardice, and make 
him generous and true and brave with the 
love of his brother and his fearless certainty 
of God. 

" Return unto the land of thy fathers, and 
to thy kindred ; and I will be with thee," said 
the voice of the Lord to Jacob, after the twice 
seven years of service to Laban in Haran, and 
yet six more years in which he " provided for 
his own house also," and grew rich, and " in- 
creased exceedingly." 



THE PATRIARCHAL CHARACTER 109 

It is hardly sweet and of a simple assurance 
to read the mingled history just here ; the 
confusion of God's true word with the cun- 
ning promptings of a man's own mind to the 
outwitting of another man, and the calling 
this a heavenly insj^iration. Perhaps Jacob 
had really gotten no more from Laban than 
he had faithfully earned in the long twenty 
years ; but it was surely not gotten in God's 
way. Doubtless it was quite time that he 
should be called from his successful strata- 
gems and circumventions, and put in fresh 
and nobler relations with a past in which there 
was much that he should atone for. 

There were fraud and contrivance in the de- 
parture. Rachel purloined her father's gods, 
and hid them with a falsehood ; and with all 
his household and his goods and his camels 
and his cattle, Jacob stole away secretly from 
Laban. 

And Laban pursued and overtook him with 
not unreasonable complaint. They quarreled. 
They had it all out at last, — claim and re- 
proach, accusal and justifying ; and both were 
so far right and so far wrong, and the inter- 
ests of both were so far intermixed, that it 
ended in a treaty ; a -covenant witnessed by 



110 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

" an heap of stones," raised into a pillar, be- 
side wliich they did eat together in a certain 
amity, and did promise, mutually, that never, 
for any harm, should either pass beyond this 
pillar to the other. 

" And Labau rose up, and kissed his sons 
and his daughters, and blessed them ; and 
Laban departed, and returned unto his j)lace." 

Poor old Laban ! Surely the same good 
Lord went back with him into his forlornness 
and old age, to comfort him, who went for- 
ward with Jacob and his wives and his chil- 
dren into the southward country, to the home 
of his youth. 

" And Jacob went on his way, and the 
angels of God met him." 

There is no mistaking when the angels of 
God do meet a man. He may deceive him- 
self half his life with sophistries ; he may 
parley and prevaricate with himself, and be- 
cause he has once tarried at a Bethel, and 
had the ascending and descending beauty of 
a vision into the surrounding of the unseen, 
and heard a voice saying, " I am with thee, 
and will keep thee in all places whither thou 
goest," he may possibly persuade himself that 
his own after wishes and scheming suggestions 



THE PATRIARCHAL CHARACTER 111 

are of that same holy word aud counsel ; he 
may overlay his faith with greed, aud stint his 
obedience by fear, but he will never mistake 
when God's angels come again in earnest, and 
his life and motive shrivel in the flame of their 
pure presence, and a great winnowing wind 
sweeps through him in the stooping of their 
wings, before which all chaff of the vain and 
ignoble in him flies off, dispersing ; when 
some tremendous circumstance compels him, 
and tests him to the very centre of will and 
courage and resolve ; or when a tender light 
reveals to him the depths of his own spirit, 
and of the meanings of his past, and his miss- 
ings and his forfeitings, and the love that he 
did not know but sinned against ; and a re- 
pentance searches him through and through, 
until the best of him aches and yearns and 
stretches out strong desire toward the return- 
ing and restoring that may yet be if God will ; 
when things like these happen, there is doubt 
neither in the man's own mind nor in the 
reading of his story. 

God's angels came and met Jacob on the 
way toward Edom and his brother Esau. 
And he knew them, for both the peace and 



112 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

the rebuke that were in their faces ; and he 
said, " This is God's host ; and he called the 
name of the place Mahanaim, " — " the two 
hosts,'' or "the two camps." He knew that 
beside his tents were the tents of the invisi- 
ble ; that he was visited as of old by them who 
descended upon the great ladder " set up on 
earth, whose top reached into the heaven." 

Surrounded with their tender influence, 
their reproach, their pleading, he sent forward 
men to find his brother, bearing gentle, be- 
seeching message ; that he had come back 
after all this time into the home country ; not 
needing anything, for that he had gained 
much worldly goods, — " oxen, and asses, and 
flocks, and men-servants and women-servants." 
Not for any help, or to demand or seize any- 
thing of his brother's possessions ; only to ask 
a welcome. 

" I have sent to tell my lord," was the word 
of respectful homage, " that I may find grace 
in thy sight." 

That meant all ; forgiveness, reconciliation, 
brotherly unity again. The better part of 
Jacob's nature was stirred, and warm, and 
eager. He was coming home, to his old 
father, to his kindred in the south country, to 



THE PATRIARCHAL CHARACTER 113 

make his abode, with all that he had gained, 
among them. He wanted, he besought for, 
not only a peaceful permission, but a loving 
reception. 

The messengers came back with their an- 
nouncement : " We came to \hj brother Esau, 
and also he cometh to meet thee, and four 
hundred men with him." 

Why four hundred men ? The conscious, 
fearful spirit of Jacob quaked instantly at 
this. 

To do him honor ? To emphasize with a 
splendid generosity the forgiveness of the old, 
and the kindly response to the new ? 

Jacob was not yet of such a generosity him- 
self as to understand it so. He was " greatly 
afraid and distressed ; " his old terrors got 
hold of him ; he thought only of escape. He 
divided his people and his flocks into two 
bands ; and said, " If Esau come to the one 
company, and smite it, then the other company 
which is left shall escape." 

Something double in the man always sug- 
gested the hedging with double chances. A 
finer nature would have gone forward with 
all, for mutual and entire defense, or for the 
sharing of whatever fate .together. One com- 



114 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

pany was to be sacrificed, that the other might 
be unobserved, or let alone. It was a throw- 
ing to the wolves. 

What can be done with such a limp, uncer- 
tain, collapsing character as that? 

God knew when He took it in hand. 

Jacob fell a-praying. For himself, and for 
safety ; for " the mother with the children." 
That last, and the confession, — " I am not 
worthy of the least of all thy mercies, and of 
all the truth which thou hast shewed unto thy 
servant," — were the redeeming points in the 
appeals; they proved that in him which was 
redeemable. 

Then he turned to his policy again ; changed 
and ruled, doubtless, by the nobler instinct, 
the side of him that had spoken in the truest 
of his prayer. He would not wait to be 
attacked, and for his goods and following to 
be seized; he would send rich, ample gifts 
to Esau. He would show his brother that 
he had come to share ; that the old grasping 
covetousness in him was outgrown, replaced. 

He divided off, in hundreds, and thirties, 
and twenties, and tens, of his flocks and cattle ; 
a magnificent portion of all ; and he set them 
in separate droves, and said to his servants, 



THE PATRIARCHAL CHARACTER 115 

" Pass over," with them, " before me, and put 
a space between drove and drove." And he 
commanded each servant in charge to say to 
Esau, as he in turn came up with him, " They 
be thy servant Jacob's. It is a present to my 
lord Esau ; and behold, also he is behind us." 

Restitution, compensation ; not friendly and 
beseeching words only. This would move the 
heart of Esau, convincing his clear, honest 
sense of right and right intent. " Afterward 
I will see his face ; perad venture," — after 
these, — "he will accept of me." 

And that night he " took his two wives, and 
his two women-servants, and his eleven sons, 
and passed over the ford Jabbok." 

That night was the great crisis of his life. 

The good and the wortliless in him came to 
open issue. 

" There wrestled a man with him until the 
breaking of the day." 

True manhood, — the real man in him, 
represented or not by an outward objective 
presence, — against the petty, timorous, half- 
way, hindering self. 

Only by some similarly intense vital expe- 
rience, can this great conflict of Jacob with 
the angel be understood. It is not every soul 



116 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

that is capable of such contradiction. Not 
every man comes to such direct question and 
grapple. He who does cannot be utterly con- 
temptible. 

There were two Jacobs in the struggle. The 
one, yet dominated by his lower impulse, not 
ready yet to yield to the angelic insistence 
and demand ; the other, knowing that the 
heavenly must conquer or himself be lost, and 
crying out with passion and strain of counter- 
action, " I will not let thee go, except thou 
bless me ! " 

Jacob was of an open spiritual nature. He 
was susceptible to influence from both realms 
of the unseen. Now the low and evil, through 
the natural, laid hold of him and moved his 
act ; now the high celestial force swept down 
upon him and possessed him, so that he rose 
above his daily plane, and cast off his habitual 
hindrances and failings. Which man of him 
should overcome, outlast, and 6e, was the de- 
termination to which these alternating con- 
trols must, at some point in the making of him, 
arrive. 

And this night the hour had come. 

Alone with God's angel, till the break of 



THE PATRIARCHAL CHARACTER 117 

day, he strove, and tried conclusions. At last, 
the touch upon the very quick, the " hol- 
low of his thigh," — the weakness where his 
power should be, — was laid by the finger 
of his holy foe. He felt that poor self of him 
confess to its own impotence and baseness. 
He knew, for the first time, and realized to 
his inmost shrinking consciousness, that his 
very being was out of joint. 

" Thou art wanting," the convicting touch 
had said to him. " Here, where should be thy 
sinew and thy strength, — in thy very motive 
power, — thou art lame and halt. Thou canst 
not contend with me, neither wilt thou suffer 
me to prevail." — "Let me go; for the day 
breaketh." 

It was like the cursing of the fruitless fig- 
tree ; a declaring that the curse already was. 

And then the human soul asserted its 
humanity, wherein it was the better of the 
tree. It turned against its own unworthiness, 
took side with the condemnation, and made 
its claim upon the eternal Life. 

Surrendering and conquering at once, it 
cried out, " Angel of God, I will not perish I 
I will not let thee go, except thou bless me ! " 



118 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

" Wliat is thy name?" came presently the 
answer. " What art thou ? By what art thou 
known ? " 

The searching question went down into all 
the man's memory and life. 

" And he said, Jacob ; I am The Sup- 
planter,''' 

" No more Jacob," fell upon his changed 
spirit the grand sentence of the angel, " but 
Israel. As a prince hast thou power with 
God and with men, and hast prevailed." 

The princely in him was awakened. Hence- 
forth in the princely, — in the upright, in the 
highest of him as a man, — should he be 
known, remembered. He should be Israel. 
His children should be the Children of Israel ; 
under that name a great nation before God. 

Jacob had won at last his true birthright. 

" I have seen God face to face," he said, 
" and my life is preserved." 

And he called the name of the place " Pe- 
niel," — "The Face of God." 

"And as he passed over Penuel, the sun 
rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh." 

There must be, in the remainder of a life 
upon the earth, a loss, an impairment, where 



THE PATRIARCHAL CHARACTER 119 

there has been a sin. The reminder of his 
weakness was with Jacob ; the touch of the 
angel remained upon the shrunken sinew, as 
he went upon his further way. Nevertheless, 
even halting, he went in the new strength of 
the Lord, and was at one with Him in the love 
of his brother. 

In that common Divine love, the two of the 
same birth and the long alienation were recon- 
ciled. 

In the place of his new home in Shechem 
of Canaan, Jacob built an altar and called it 
El-elolie-Israel. God, — the God of Israel : 
the God of the new man, and the Giver of the 
new name. 



CHAPTER V 

EGYPT 

Every now and then, at high points of 
crisis in the Hebrew history, there was a so- 
journ in Egypt. 

Abraham went down there, driven by fam- 
ine, with Sarai, his wife, and Lot, his bro- 
ther's son ; and came back into the south coun- 
try of Canaan, with all that he had gained 
there, at the generous command of the Pha- 
raoh, after his deception with the king con- 
cerning Sarai. 

Isaac, in like manner, for the same cause of 
want in his own country, journeyed far that 
way; but was forbidden actually to go over 
into Egypt, and stayed among the Philistines ; 
upon whose king he practiced the self-same 
deceit that his father had done with the Pha- 
raoh. He also grew exceedingly rich in the 
strange country, and came back to Beersheba, 
in the southmost limit of his own, and thence 
afterward a little farther north, to Hebron, 



EGYPT 121 

in the mountain lands tliat were to become a 
part of the portion of the tribe of Judah. 

Joseph, the best beloved son of Jacob, — 
the boy of vision and mystic interpretations, 
— reading the inner signs of things by the 
prophetic gift, and finding in them a marvel- 
ous assurance of power and errand in his own 
life, which he in pure simplicity declared 
among his brethren, — sold by them in their 
anger and envy into a caravan of wandering 
Ishmaelites, — was sold again in Eg}^3t; there 
to fulfill the high purposes that had been in a 
remote shadow revealed to him. 

Famine again scourged Canaan. There 
was plenty of corn in Egyj)t. The brethren 
were sent down by their father Jacob, to buy 
and bring back of the abundance ; and of 
their journeys it resulted that Joseph, splen- 
did in power as governor and treasurer for 
the king, was made loiown to them. 

Again it came to pass that the whole 
Hebrew family migrated to this land of lux- 
ury and magnificent mystery, where for centu- 
ries uncertain in their record they remained ; 
at first prospering richly under the favor of 
the friendly monarch to whose confidence 



122 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

and patronage the very seership of Joseph — 
scorned of his kindred, but believed in among 
the soothsayings of a people dimly touched 
with their own half -presciences — had raised 
him ; afterward, crushed down into abject 
slavery under cruel oppression by rulers who 
" knew not Joseph." 

Through Eg3^pt, always, came the chosen 
to their higher promise. " Out of Egypt," 
in the glorious fullness of time for his Gos- 
pel, did God even " call his Son." There is 
grand significance in it all, from the begin- 
ning to the end. 

Egypt is " Mizraim ; " the dual country ; 
the Upper and the Lower ; a land and nation 
rich and glowing in natural life, and wise 
with intellectual wisdoms. 

Fertile to superabundance, the " granary of 
the world ; " refined in its domestic custom 
and relation ; finished in civilization ; cunning 
and expert in the industrial arts ; grand to 
sublimity in its architecture and monuments ; 
proud and dominant in arms and rule ; pro- 
found in knowledges ; far-reaching, even to 
the occult, in thought, — it was yet only a 
dual development. It had to do only with 
two planes of being, — the physical and intel- 



EGYPT 123 

lectual. In these it might be the very " een- 
tre and border of the earth," for depth of 
understanding and Avide circuit of achieve- 
ment ; but it had not touched the third 
sphere. The spiritual was not opened to it. 

Egypt was its own Sphinx ; it was Reason 
and Materialism ; a superb human head upon 
a correspondingly superb animal body. Egypt 
reared up the incomprehensible grandeur of 
the Pyramids, in the lines and numbers of the 
building of the universe ; but the makers of 
the Pyramids reached not the eternal signi- 
ficance of lines and numbers ; they builded 
beyond themselves, for an after interpretation. 

There was a King's Chamber in the heart 
of the great structure ; but it was a sealed 
darkness ; it held an empty coffer. 

The religion of Egypt was theoretical; its 
system was a zodiac of shining, indubitable 
signs, precisely studied and diagrammed ; 
through it lay the apparent path of a great 
Sun ; but Egypt stopped at the apparent, — 
the phenomenal ; her philosophy did not pen- 
etrate to the heart of all apparence, the word 
of light whose movement through creation 
makes the manifest. Her myth ended in 
myth ; her ladder had its foot upon the earth. 



124 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

but its top ended short in the mid-air. The 
angels of God could not descend upon it. 

Into this circumstance and civilization was 
drifted, — sent for keeping and for training, 
needing for a time just this habitat, — the 
germ of a spiritual faith ; the life of a peo- 
ple who held the initial of a final, perfect 
truth, the key to the door of the heavenly. It 
seemed as yet but idle in their hands ; they 
had not come where they could put its power 
to the full disclosure. It was to open to them 
all the doors ; the natural should not be mere 
natural to them, nor the intellectual all of 
understanding; but access to the supreme is 
by the positive ; the beginnings are in hiero- 
glyphic. They must first sojourn in Egypt. 

It was a long reach from Joseph to Moses. 

We first find Joseph's insight manifesting 
itself in a divination of dreams and omens ; 
an interpretation of parable-signs into mean- 
ings and tokens of that which should happen 
in the natural. This was his beginning in 
his youth, when he dreamed his own dreams 
about the stars of heaven and the sheaves of 
the harvest ; the sheaves that his brothers 



EGYPT 125 

bound bending down and making obeisance 
before his own sheaf in the field ; and the yet 
more audacious and offending similitude of 
the sun and the moon and the eleven stars 
rendering homage to his presence. 

Because of these arrogant prefigurements 
his brethren were indignant, and hated him; 
and his father Jacob rebuked him. Never- 
theless, Jacob, recollecting the dreams of his 
own youth, and their divine fulfillment, " ob- 
served the saying," and laid it by in mind. 

After his betrayal into slavery, and his 
supposed death, — after his first surprising 
fortunes in Egypt, in the house of Potiphar, 
and the evil and malicious false accusation 
upon which he was cast into prison, — Joseph 
appears again in the exercise of his peculiar 
powers in the reading of the dreams of his 
fellow prisoners ; translating their auguries 
into the correspondent coming events, every 
particular of which undeviatingly took place. 

All this was external, psychological ; but 
behind it we find presently the deep Hebrew 
conviction of the word and working of the 
Lord ; the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob 
asserting itself, when, the Pharaoh upon the 



126 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

throne having been strangely visited by a 
dream which none could interpret, his officer 
remembered the "young man, servant to the 
captain of the guard," who had foretold his 
own happy reinstatement, and whom he had, 
with selfish heedlessness, left languishing in 
prison " two full years." 

Summoned before the presence of the king, 
Joseph came, and listened to the demand that 
Pharaoh made : "I have dreamed a dream, 
and none can interpret it ; I have heard say 
that thou canst understand a dream." 

It was a royal order ; it was a great royal 
compliment. It was a different thing from the 
talks in the prison, with companions, servants 
like himself, upon the surface meanings of 
their sleeping fancies. It meant for Joseph the 
assumption of grave office and responsibility ; 
the declaring of something which should affect 
a kingdom, and disclose Almighty counsel. 

" It is not in me," he said simply. " God 
shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace." 

And then Pharaoh told the young Hebrew 
his two dreams ; of the fat kine and the lean 
kine by the river, and again of the full ears 
in the corn and the ears blasted with the east 
wind ; and the lean kine and the thin ears de- 



EGYPT 127 

vouring the fat kine and the full ears ; and 
that none of his wise men could declare the 
portent to him. 

" God hath shewed Pharaoh what he is 
about to do," was the answer of the son of Is- 
rael. And after he had expounded the dreams 
as one, and their meaning as of the time of 
plenty and the time of famine in the land, he 
said again, as he had began, " What God is 
about to do he sheweth unto Pharaoh." — 
" And for that," he repeats, " the dream was 
doubled unto Pharaoh twice ; because the thing 
is established by God, and God will shortly 
bring it to pass." 

Then he counseled the king ; and with such 
simple wisdom, that he and all his servants 
about him saw that the judgment was clear and 
good. And to question of " a man discreet 
and wise " to carry out the counsel, — 

" Gan we find," said Pharaoh to his court, 
" such a one as this, in whom the Sj)irit of 
God is ? " 

The faith of the Hebrew was of quickening 
power ; it conveyed itself into the soul of the 
king; for at least that moment, he saw the 
depth open, and the light stream from beyond 
all enveiling sign. 



128 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

And he made Joseph his ruler and purveyor 
over his people. 

So it all came to pass, as the word had been 
said ; and God was with Joseph in the land of 
Egypt ; and the Egyptians were fed through 
the time of famine, "and all countries came 
into Egypt to Joseph to buy corn ; because 
that the famine was sore in all lands." 

We know well how Jacob heard of this corn 
in Egypt, and sent down his sons from Canaan 
to buy ; and how Joseph dealt with them, and 
hid himself from them for a while, watching, 
questioning, testing them ; demanding that 
they should bring to him their youngest bro- 
ther, — his very own brother, — Benjamin ; 
and how remorse stirred suddenly in their 
hearts for their old sin, and they said among 
themselves in the presence of the stern ruler, 
" We are guilty concerning our brother. We 
saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought 
us, and we would not hear. Therefore is this 
distress come upon us." 

And Eeuben answered bitterly, " Spake I 
not unto you, saying, Do not sin against the 
child ; and ye would not hear ? Therefore, be- 
hold, also his blood is required." 



EGYPT 129 

It was as the day of judgment to these sons 
of Israel. It was the day of their purifying 
repentance, and their restoration. 

They spoke in their own tongue, and knew 
not that the ruler understood ; but Joseph, hear- 
ing every word, turned away his face and wept. 
It was like the pity of the Lord, who knows all 
we say to ourselves in our self-condemnation. 

He had told them, in offering his conditions, 
'' This do, and live ; for I fear God.'' And 
even that — his acknowledgment of their God, 
the God of Israel — had not made him known 
to them. 

So Joseph took Simeon as hostage, and 
" bound him before their eyes," and let the 
others go, with their sacks full upon their 
laden asses, and their money secretly returned 
to them, each man's in the mouth of his sack. 

One of them, opening his sack by the way, 
found it. " My money is restored ! " he cried. 
And their very hearts failed them, over- 
whelmed by such strange nobility of treatment 
where they had deserved nothing, and afraid 
of what the gift might mean. 

" What hath God done unto us ? " they ex- 
claimed. " Is it his great good, or somehow 
his visitation for our great evil? " 



130 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

And they came to their father Israel, with 
their wonderful, troubled story ; and they emp- 
tied their sacks before him ; " and behold, 
every man's bundle of money was in his 
sack." 

All given back, — the gracious sign ! And 
yet they were all afraid : they could not under- 
stand the full mercy. 

And Jacob mourned. 

They had this yet to bear. They had to 
hear him say, in his old, tremulous, grieving 
accents, "Me have ye bereaved of my chil- 
dren : Joseph is not ; and Simeon is not ; and 
ye will take Benjamin away. All these things 
are against me." 

Then Keuben, the firstborn, the " beginning 
of his strength," — the truest in these matters 
of all the brethren, — offered his two sons as 
pledges. " Slay them," he said, " if I bring 
him not to thee. Deliver him into my hand, 
and I will bring him to thee again." But 
Israel still refused. 

Famine again ; and sore in the land. 

The corn brought from Egypt exhausted ; 
and Jacob saying once more to his sons, " Go 
again, and buy us a little food." 



EGYPT 131 

Judah remonstrated. " We may not go," 
he said, " except we take our brother. The 
man did solemnly protest unto us." 

" Why told ye him ye had another bro- 
ther?" 

"He asked us straitly." 

" Send the lad with me," said Judah, — he 
who should be the sceptre-bearer ; — "I will 
be surety for him." 

And their father Israel said, " Then do this : 
carry the man a present : take of the best 
fruits of the land ; balm, honey, spices, myrrh, 
nuts, almonds. Take double money ; and the 
money that was brought again in the mouth of 
your sacks carry again ; peradventure it was 
an oversight. Take — also " — we may im- 
agine with what struggle this last concession 
came — " your hr other ^"^ — the very heart of 
me. " Go again unto the man ; and God Al- 
mighty give you mercy before the man ! " 

They did all as their father had said. They 
came down into Egypt, with their gifts, and 
their money, for payment and repayment, and 
Benjamin. 

With a trembling anxiety they met the 
steward of Joseph's house, whom the gover- 



132 THE GOB OF THE PATRIARCHS 

nor sent out to them ; and they told him the 
whole story. 

"We came honestly to buy food," they 
said ; " and when we opened our sacks, be- 
hold, every man's money in the mouth of his 
sack. We have brought it again, and we 
have brought other money. We want food. 
We cannot tell who put the money in our 
sacks." 

And the steward, to their glad astonish- 
ment, answered, " Peace be to you ; fear 
not ; your God, the God of your father, hath 
given you treasure in your sacks. I had your 
money." 

This man was an Egyptian ; a worshiper of 
Osiris and of Ashteroth ; yet he had honor in 
his heart, like Pharaoh, for the gods of other 
men. Surely neither he, nor his king, was so 
far, after all, from the kingdom of heaven that 
is within all. And they had among them, in 
their very midst of confidence and honor, the 
leaven of the life of Joseph. 

The steward brought out Simeon to them ; 
safe, and well entreated. He gave them water 
for their refreshment, and provender for their 
beasts ; and bade them make ready to eat 
bread with Joseph at the noontide meal. 



EGYPT 133 

When Joseph came, and — their gifts in 
their hands — they " bowed themselves to the 
earth," the great officer of the king seems 
scarcely to have seen the offering, or heeded 
much the salutation, literal fulfillment though 
it was of his own old boyhood's dream. He 
asked them simply of their welfare, and then 
allowed the longing of his heart to utter itself 
in the carefully restrained question, " Your 
father ? The old man of whom ye spake, — 
is he well, and yet alive ? " 

"And they answered, Thy servant our 
father is in good health ; he is yet alive." 
And again " they bowed down their heads, 
and made obeisance." 

He lifted uj) his eyes upon Benjamin. 

" Is this 3^our younger brother, of whom ye 
spake unto me ? — God be gracious unto thee, 
my son ! " 

And then, with his great love surging in his 
heart, he had to "make haste," and he re- 
treated into his chamber, and wept there. 

But he "washed his face," and still "re- 
frained himself," and went out, and said, 
" Set on bread." And they ate, at their sep- 
arate tables ; Joseph by himself, as state de- 
manded ; the brethren by themselves, and the 



134 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

Egyptians by themselves ; for they might not 
eat with Hebrews. And they ate and drank, 
and were all merry. 

And still Joseph refrained, and tried them 
again. In love, as God tries ; to bring out 
the truest and best that was in them. 

The sacks were filled; the money was put 
again in the mouths of the sacks ; and in 
Benjamin's sack the governor's silver cup, out 
of which he drank, and divined. 

And then, when they were a little way out 
of the city, the steward was sent after them. 

" Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for 
good?" was his stern demand. "Is not this 
the cup in which my lord drinketh, and 
whereby he divineth ? Ye have done evil." 

He spoke as to guilty men. He explained 
nothing. 

But the men in their truth spoke proudly. 

" Wherefore saith my lord these words ? 
God forbid we should do this ! Did we not 
bring back all the money? Wherefore then 
should we steal ? " 

And they took down every man his sack 
to the ground; and opened them for search- 
ing. 



EGYPT 135 

" And the cup was found in Benjamin's 
sack." 

They were all brought back to Joseph's 
house. 

And Joseph charged them with the deed, 
asking them how it was that they had done it. 

" Wot ye not," he said, "that such a man 
as I can certainly divine ? " 

And Judah saw how the old iniquity — 
"the iniquity of their heels," — of their past 
— had " compassed them about ; " and he said, 
in the depth of his contrition, " How shall we 
clear ourselves ? ' ' We are not clear ; if of 
this thing, we are not clear of the other, that 
has been ; " God hath found out the iniquity 
of thy servants ; behold, we are my lord's ser- 
vants, both we, and he also with whom the cup 
is found." 

And Joseph said, " God forbid ; the man 
in whose hand the cup is found, he shall be 
my servant. As for you, get you up in peace 
unto your father." 

Then Judah came near unto him, and en- 
treated. 

He told the whole long, sad, touching story ; 
of their father, the old man, and the son of 



136 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

his old age ; all that was left to him of the 
wife of his youth's love, Rachel ; that the 
other of the two she bare him had perished ; 
that " his life was bound up in the lad's life ; " 
that to go back without Benjamin would be to 
take his father's life ; that he, Judah, would 
stay, and be a bondman, for he was surety for 
the boy ; but that he could not go up without 
the lad unto his father. 

Then Joseph sent away all his Egyptian 
servants and guards, and stood alone among 
his brethren, and declared himself to them, 
and no longer refrained himself, but laid by 
his dignity, and wept aloud. 

" I am Joseph. Z^oth my father yet live f " 
he cried. 

And not a man could answer ; for they were 
dismayed, and " troubled at his presence." 

It was like a meeting in the life beyond 
with him whom they had injured and slain. 

And as one, loving and forgiving in the Life 
Beyond, might do, did Joseph. 

" Come near to me, I pray you," he said. 
And then they did come near. 

" I am Joseph, whom ye sold into Egypt. 
Be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that 



EGYPT 137 

ye sold me hither." I am not angry. " God 
did send me hefore you to preserve life.'''' 

Is it not so they go before us toward whom 
we have failed, whom in our ignorance and 
folly and unkindness we have injured, to for- 
give and to make a place, — to be as Christs 
for us before God ? 

" God sent me before you to preserve you, 
. . . and to save your lives by a great deliv- 
erance." 

Is there not this great comfort also laid up 
for us in the story of Joseph ? 

" God hath made me lord of all Egypt ; 
come down unto me : tarry not : haste, and 
bring down my father hither. Tell him of 
all my glory in Egypt. You shall dwell in the 
land of Goshen : you shall be near to me ; I 
will nourish you. Ye shall belong in the land, 
and grow here." 

" And he fell upon his brother Benjamin's 
neck, and wept ; and Benjamin wept upon his 
neck." 

They were like the last tears, that may even 
be shed in the first hours of heaven; before 
God shall wipe away all tears from off all 
faces. 



138 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

" Moreover, lie kissed all his brethren." 
No old wrong was remembered. It was all 
God's right. They were to rejoice together. 

So Israel came down into Egypt, and the 
last long sojourn was begun. 

" Eegard not your stuff ; take wagons, to 
bring your father, and your wives, and your 
little ones ; the good of all the land of Egypt 
is yours." 

Again, it was like the gathering of the kin- 
dreds together, to their home ; the " place pre- 
pared," among the "many mansions." 

And when Israel heard the word, and saw 
how his child, parted from him long years 
before, had sent for him and was waiting for 
him, " his spirit revived," and he said, " It is 
enough : Joseph my son is yet alive." 

" And Joseph made ready his chariot, and 
went up to meet Israel, his father, to Goshen ; 
and presented himself unto him ; and he fell 
on his neck, and wept a good while." 

Then Joseph came and told Pharaoh, tak- 
ing five of his brethren with him. 



EGYPT 139 

Proud, doubtless, lie was of these grand 
young men, five out of eleven, sons of Israel, 
sons of Abraham. 

And how surely he relied upon the magna- 
nimity of the king ! His people were shep- 
herds ; and " every shepherd was an abomina- 
tion unto the Egyptians ; " yet Joseph had 
bidden them to declare their calling to Pha- 
raoh, when he should ask it of them. 

When the king put the question, therefore, 
" What is your occupation ? " they answered, 
" We are shepherds ; we have come hither to 
sojourn, for the famine is sore in the land of 
Canaan. We pray thee, let thy servants dwell 
in the land of Goshen." And Pharaoh turned 
to Joseph, saying only, " Thy father and thy 
hrethren are come unto thee : the land of 
Egypt is before thee ; in the best of the land 
make thy father and thy brethren to dwell ; and 
if thou knowest any men of activity among 
them, then make them rulers over my cattle." 

" And Joseph brought in Jacob his father, 
and set him before Pharaoh." 

And Pharaoh inquired kindly of him ; of 
his age, seeing him so gentle and venerable. 

And Jacob told him that his pilgrimage had 
been of a hundred and thirty years, yet the 



140 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 

days of his life had been few and evil, and 
had not attained unto the years of the life of 
his fathers. " Few and evil," — or insuffi- 
cient, — do men count the years of their lives 
upon this earth, after all is done ; for they are 
not the "attaining;" they have been con- 
sumed in a hope and a striving, with many a 
delay and thwart. Because, the end is not yet. 

" And Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and went out 
from before Pharaoh." 

And Joseph gave his father and his breth- 
ren a possession in the land of Rameses, the 
" best of the land ; " but it lay to the east- 
ward, that which was called the land of 
Goshen. It was not in the strict ancient 
boundary of Egypt, but a province. So the 
shepherd people were separate, in their do- 
main, from the Egyptians. 

There Israel gathered his sons about him, 
and gave them in his last days his inspired 
counsel and admonition, his prophetic word 
and characterization of each, and " yielded up 
his spirit," and was gathered unto his people. 

After the death of Israel, his sons were 
again afraid. 

" Perad venture Joseph will hate us now, 



EGYPT 141 

and requite us all the evil which we did unto 
him," they said. And they sent a messenger 
to entreat a fresh forgiveness, and his mercy. 
It is a harder and a longer thing for the sin- 
ner to forgive his own sin, than for the sin to 
be forgiven. The evil that has been in him 
keeps him slow to believe in the everlasting 
good. He wants the seventy times seven assur- 
ance. And God has given it in the seventy 
times seven command. 

Once again did Joseph speak the plain, 
strong word. " Fear not : am I in the place 
of God ? " he told them. " Ye thought evil 
against me ; but God meant it unto good, to 
bring to pass as it is this day, to save much 
people alive." 

It was God's forgiveness ; God's taking up 
and making right ; the forgiveness of man was 
the included thing. 

"Now therefore, fear ye not ; I will nourish 
you, and your little ones." And he comforted 
them, and spake kindly to them. 

"And Joseph lived an hundred and ten 
years ; he saw Ephraim's children of the third 
generation ; the children of the son of Manas- 
seh were brought up upon Joseph's knees." 



142 THE GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS 
« 
God is good unto the kindreds ; he saves 

his people in \h<d\Y families. Every man shall 

have his own, and shall dwell among them. 

This was the gospel to the patriarchs. 

" And Joseph said at last unto his breth- 
ren, I die ; and God will surely visit you, 
and bring you out of this land unto the land 
which he sware unto Abraham, and to Isaac, 
and to Jacob. God will surely visit you," he 
repeated ; " and ye shall carry up my bones 
from hence." 

And he took an oath thereto from the chil- 
dren of Israel. 

" So Joseph died, an hundred and ten years 
old : and they embalmed him, and he was put 
in a coffin in Egypt." 



PART IV 

THE EVENTS AND SIGNS OF THE EXODUS 



CHAPTER I 

THE ROD OF POWER 

" God shall surely visit you," Joseph had 
declared to his people, in the clear-seeing of 
his dying hours. 

It was centuries later, fewer or more as the 
chronologies have not been able definitely to 
determine, that the word came to Moses in 
Midian. 

Born in Egypt, of a Hebrew mother, his 
life outlawed from before his birth, but saved, 
as Joseph's had been, by the will of God, — 
taken in gentle charge by the daughter of a 
Pharaoh, — he had grown to manhood, been 
educated, adopted wholly as an Egyptian. 

Nevertheless, his time waited. The love of 
his own people was in him ; his birthright as 
a son of Israel remained. He walked between 
the races, mingling with 'the daily life of each, 
related thouofh distinct. 



144 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

The Hebrew shepherds had been degraded 
into slavery. Over them were the hard Egyp- 
tian taskmasters. A cruelty of one of these 
upon a countryman of his own, awakened the 
righteous wrath of kindred, to defense and 
retribution. Moses slew the Egyptian, and 
escaped into Midian. 

For forty years he lived there, in the wilder- 
ness, an Arabian. He served Jethro, an Ara- 
bian shepherd, and took his daughter for wife. 

Out of Midian, after the forty years, he was 
to return into Egypt, called and sent of God, 
and bearing from Him the rod of a divine 
authority. 

A rod is a sign — it is also a conveyance 
— of Power. It is the kingly sign, — the 
sceptre. It is the sign of a finding, a dis- 
cerning power ; the power of discovery, which 
is the descent of a thought-power through a 
man's brain, and even to his very fingers, 
whereby hidden knowledges are laid hold of, 
secret treasures and springs of water brought 
to light and use, and wonderful mechanisms 
adapted and informed. The divining rod, — 
the magician's and the sibyl's and the fairy's 
wand, — are symbols as old as human imagi- 



THE ROD OF POWER 145 

nation and belief. And there is a reality in 
them. There is always a conducting line for 
the living force. There is a rod for the light- 
ning. There is a possible grasp and bringing 
down of the Unseen Might into human affairs. 
There is a trolle3^-beam that reaches up and 
lays hold of the great vital currents of crea- 
tion, and draws thence what it wants for the 
work, the act, of the hour. There is a faith 
that puts its hand in God's, and through which 
God's hand works the wonders that it will. 
Life is fast shaping itself, though half blindly, 
and with many a misapplication, presumption, 
and blunder, to this marvelous relation. The 
man who stands upon a car-platform and holds 
the motor is in direct touch with the Divine. 
Here and there, possibly, one thinks of it. 
Each one, maybe, in his obscure sense of the 
mystery of it, feels more than he puts into 
conscious thought. If men could keep con- 
tinual recognition of it, in every grasp they 
have of any life-force, — every human being 
woidd be strong with the immediate strength 
of the Most High. Every soul would be a 
Moses. The time is coming. Here and there 
it has come. " Lay hold of My Strength," 
saith the Lord. And a. Saint Paul cries out 



146 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

exultingly, " I can do all things, through 
Christ which strengtheneth me." Christian 
Science is as old as the Book of Exodus. 
Moses learned the alphabet of it away out 
there in Midian. 

Leading his father-in-law's flocks over the 
far part of the desert to find pasture, he came 
to the mountain of God. 

The Great Presence — the awful Might — 
was there before him, in the inaccessible 
heights, the tremendous overshadowing ma- 
jesty, of Horeb. 

At the mountain foot, close to the desert 
sands, grew a living thing ; a bush. On the 
edge of desolation, life began again ; and the 
light of life shone forth from the growing herb 
to the opened sight of Moses. It was a sudden 
revelation. He beheld it straightway to its 
heart as the Life of God making itself food 
for the life of beasts and men. The glory of 
heaven shone through the little plant ; it was 
all aflame with that which blazes in sun and 
star ; it was Present Deity. " The angel of the 
Lord appeared unto Moses out of the midst of 
the bush." 

So vivid was it that his very bodily senses 
took part in the perception. How was he to 



THE ROD OF POWER 147 

distinguisli between that which came through 
ordinary channel of outward impression and 
that way reached his inner knowledge every 
day, and this, given direct from the within to 
the within, yet to whose intimate touch and 
thrill the external chords vibrated in answer 
to the same reality they were attuned to for 
carrying its word from world to spirit ? 

It even seemed to him as wholly a won- 
der of sensation ; a thing to be investigated 
on the material plane. He would have come 
close to it with common touch and literal be- 
holding ; he would have sought to penetrate 
— as men keep trying still to do — to the 
great why of a fact from the outside ; to learn 
the because of a glory opened forth to him 
from a common growth, with test of eyesight 
and of fingers' ends ; to probe with handling 
the secret of the incarnation of a power that 
burned in splendor of fire and did not con- 
sume. 

But the voice of God called to him, — and 
again his senses seemed to bring the word, — 
" Put thy shoes from off thy feet ; " stop thine 
outward approach ; try not to search that way, 
and to explain. Be content that the glory is 
shown thee ; there is no- need to strive to come 



148 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

nearer or to know more ; be still where thou 
art ; " the place loJiereon thou standest is holy 
ground." It is /, saith the Lord, that come 
to thee ! 

And possessed with the sublime fear which 
was of the enfolding of Almightiness, Moses 
stood still, and hid his face, — shut out his 
bodily senses, — and listened. 

And the Voice said, " I am the God of thy 
father. The God of Abraham, the God of 
Isaac, the God of Jacob. I have heard the 
cry of my people, and I am come down to de- 
liver them. I will deliver them by thee. I 
will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest 
bring forth my people, the children of Israel, 
out of Egypt." 

" What am I," cries Moses, " that I should 
go to Pharaoh, and bring the children of Israel 
forth?" 

" / will be with thee," was the answer ;'" / 
have sent thee. Thou shalt bring them forth, 
and ye shall serve me upon this mountain." 
They shall learn my visible Presence, and my 
leading, as thou art learning. I will show 
myself to them also in the things that I have 
made, and in the ways by which I shall guide 
them. 



THE ROD OF POWER 149 

"But if they ask me the name of this 
God of their fathers, what shall I answer 
them?" 

In the midst of the awe and the glory, the 
sense was upon him of his utter incapacity 
to transfer the vision ; to repeat the heavenly 
word ; to prove the revelation to the dulled and 
darkened souls of the people who had been 
Egyptian slaves, — makers of bricks, — so 
long. 

" Say unto them," answered the awful Voice, 
" I AM\i2ith. sent me unto you." 

The God who is ; the Be-ing ; the Power 
in all things by which all things are ; that 
which you can neither find nor name, the Hid- 
den Life. That which all souls question, 
search for ; behold, they need not search, they 
need not question. Before they can ask, they 
have felt Me : the very ground they stand on 
is holy with Me I 

This was the great manifestation ; the er- 
rand; the message. Then, surging through 
the man's thought, quickened divinely, came 
the plan, the instruction. 



150 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

Gather the elders of Israel together; say 
to them, The Lord God of your fathers has 
appeared unto me. Tell them of the great 
Promise : "I have surely visited you ; and I 
will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt 
unto a land flowing with milk and honey. I 
will do wonders in the land of Egypt ; and 
after that, the king will let you go." 

Suppose there did intrude and mingle with 
the absolute, pure Word, a swift calculation 
of the man's own mind for ways and means ? 
Suppose the device did suggest itself of " spoil- 
ing the Egyptians," — of not going away 
empty? Is it not easy to detach and distin- 
guish this from the grand, full command and 
promise, " Certainly I will be with thee ; I 
will care for thee ; " and from the true be- 
lieving which was ready to receive, to rely, 
and to obey ? Can we point to any human 
leadership or action where faith and obedience 
have rested utterly upon the Lord, and where 
no small anxiety has sought to provide and 
contrive as of itself? 

The Bible story is a human story. The 
Divine is in it ; but humanity has never yet, 
except in the One Only-Begotten, surrendered 
itself wholly, to very identification with the 



THE ROD OF POWER 151 

Divine. That was to come; the Old Testa- 
ment was leading to the New ; the New is 
leading now to the final coming of the Son of 
Man in the glory of the Father, — the lif ting- 
up of the race into the life with God, — the 
" bringing in of everlasting righteousness." 

Moses had found the Presence of God. To 
be in the presence of God is to receive power. 

The Lord said to Moses, " What is that in 
thine hand ? " 

Already in his grasp, and he knew it not. 
"Only a rod." 

" Cast it on the ground." 

Moses cast it on the ground before the 
Lord, and it became a living thing, — a quiv- 
ering, coiling, swift-gliding serpent. Some- 
thing instinct, and quick from end to end, 
with writhing, palpitating force. 

That is thy rod ! " Put forth thy hand, 
and take it by the tail." 

" And Moses put forth his hand, and 
caught it, and it became a rod in his hand ; " 
waiting for his command and use. 

Doubtless there was a flash of wondering 
pride through the man's mind, that he held 
the amazing thing ; that to his word or act it 



152 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

would answer ; that his touch controlled it. 
Do we have no such wondering of self-glory 
now? 

" Put thy hand into thy bosom." Take to 
thyself, if tliou wilt, the marvel, the achieve- 
ment, the possible of power. Through thy 
hand a miracle has been done : fold that 
hand, with the sense of its potency in it, be- 
hind the swelling pride of thine own person- 
ality. 

Moses " put his hand into his bosom ; when 
he took it out, it was leprous as snow." 

" Put thine hand into thy bosom again." 

Take to thyself now thy rebuke, thy punish- 
ment. 

And when Moses meekly obeyed the second 
bidding, and plucked forth his hand a second 
time, lo, it was again as his other flesh. No 
different ; no better ; only mortal flesh, as the 
rod was a common rod. But it was clean, 
and sound, and ready for God's service ; and 
with God was the wonder, and the power, and 
the glory. 



CHAPTER II 

THE GIVING OF THE GREAT NAME 

God had bidden Moses to say to the chil- 
dren of Israel, "It is the I Am who hath sent 
me to you. The Be-in g, — the Almighty 
One." 

Afterward, when Moses had begun his er- 
rand, and made his first appeal to Pharaoh 
for the Hebrews in the name of the Lord 
God, — when he had met only with contempt, 
and the king had said, " I know nothing of 
your Lord God, neither will I let this people 
go ; " when through his taskmasters Pharaoh 
had put yet heavier and impossible burdens 
upon the Israelites, so that they made muti- 
nous accusation on their own part against 
Moses and Aaron, declaring that they had 
deceived with false promises only to make the 
condition of the people worse ; when Moses 
came in discouragement to the Lord, and 
demanded, as ignorant, half-believing human 
hearts do always demand in their sore trou- 



154 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

bles, — " Wherefore f " " Why is it that 
thou hast so entreated us ? Why is it that 
thou hast sent me to do that which is impos- 
sible ? " — then the Lord in his majesty an- 
swered to the soul of Moses, " Thou shalt see 
what I will do ! I am the Lord. I am the 
Almighty God, who appeared to Abraham, 
and Isaac, and Jacob, and by that name I 
was known to them. Now I will make my- 
self known to you, and to my people, by my 
Name Jehovah. I will bring you out from 
your burdens and bondage ; I will redeem 
you with an outstretched arm, and I will take 
you to me for a people, and ye shall know 
that I am the Lord., your God. I am the 
Lord." 

It was a new and further revelation. It 
became a new, and larger, and closer believ- 
ing in the soul of Moses. 

Jehovah was the Person of the Divine ; the 
Lord of the Human; related in all points to 
the humanity He had made, in his own Infi- 
nite Humanity. The Jehovah-Angel was the 
personal, intimate, visiting, abiding Presence 
of God with men ; the Emmanuel, the God- 
manifest. Jehovah was the " separate Name '' 



GIVING OF THE GREAT NAME 155 

of God ; known only — as is the name He 
gives to each soul of his redeemed to call it 
by — to " them who have received it.'' 

It was by this Name that Moses, and the 
Hebrew people, henceforth believed in God. 
It held the whole mystery of Being and Di- 
vineness. In it was the Covenant with the 
created. It was a sacred thing: they dared 
not use it on their lips, but only in their 
secret hearts. Openly, devoutly, lovingly, 
they called Him Lord ; apiDrehending now 
a new meaning in the name Lord God^ and 
learning for the first time how that great, 
dear meaning was enshrined in the syllables 
interpreted to Moses beyond the early under- 
standing of their fathers. It was the awful, 
beautiful significance that had come to them ; 
it was the hiowledge hy the name^ not the 
mere calling by it, which indeed the first sons 
of Adam had been taught, beforehand of the 
full interpretation. " By my name Jehovah 
was I not laioimi unto them," said the Lord. 

The opening of new knowledges follows al- 
ways the simple, first, believing acceptations. 
It is the law of Revelation. The word — the 
sign — is given men first ; afterward, the full 
understanding. 



156 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

We have no right to discuss, to doubt, to 
pronounce upon, the deep things of the King- 
dom, till we have received its first elements 
as little children. A page of Greek will re- 
main forever unintelligible to him who has not 
learned first the alphabet of the characters in 
which it is written. 

The belief of believers is at once the key 
and the assurance of faith. " To him that 
hath " — even the smallest beginning, as a 
grain of mustard seed — ^' shall more be 
given ; but from him that hath not, shall be 
taken away even that which he hath." That 
which he hath is not a vital seed ; it is a husk 
only, and the wind shall blow it away. 

There is a holding of the seed of truth in a 
mystery ; a waiting for its unfolding ; a watch- 
ing for the command of how to deal with it ; 
a reverent fulfilling of conditions, in the con- 
fidence of something that shall grow. There 
is a contemptuous tearing to pieces, and scat- 
tering, of that which safely — even blindly 
— envelops it, and a casting away of what to 
our ignorance seems hard and uselessly hid- 
den, but which has in it the very nucleus and 
miracle of life. 



GIVING OF THE GREAT NAME 157 

To Abraham — to Moses — to the Hebrew 
people — were intrusted the beginnings ; the 
alphabet, the first syllables, of heavenly lan- 
guage ; the object-illustrations of eternal and 
infinite Fact. With all their misconstructions 
of Divine Will, with all their low and limited 
appropriations, with all their disobediences 
and rebellions and apostasies, they still, as a 
nation, held fast to the first tokens and com- 
mandments ; kept the first ordinances ; be- 
lieved in the foundation law, and looked for 
the Promise. It was their work in the line 
of the ages ; their sacred commission upon the 
earth. Among them were always a few high 
witnesses, a few Seers of the Truth beyond 
the ordinance. 

These were the " Israelites ; " by whose 
name Paul appealed, sixteen centuries after, 
to his people of that day, " stumbling at the 
old stumbling stone " of the mere law, and 
refusing the New Jehovah-Revelation of " the 
love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." 

" I could wish myself under ban from 
Christ," he cries with passion of desire in 
their behalf, " for my brethren, for my kins- 
men ; who are Israelites ; of the adoption, 
and the glory, and the covenants, and the 



158 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

giving of the law, and the service of God, and 
the promises ; whose are the fathers, and of 
whom is Christ, according to the flesh, who is 
over all, God blessed forever I " 

" Not as if the word of God hath taken 
none effect," he adds, with his great Gospel 
cheer and trust. " For they are not all Is- 
rael, — not all children, — who are of Israel, 
and the seed of Abraham. The children of 
the flesh are not the children of God ; but 
the Children of the Promise are counted for 
the seed." 

" Many are called ; few are chosen," de- 
clared the Lord himself. 

Yet " there is no restraint to the Lord, to 
save by many or by few," said the Joshua 
of the Old Testimony ; and the Christ of the 
New chose but twelve, to send out with his 
word into all the world. 



CHAPTER III 
THE lord's PASSOVER 

Life offered is life redeemed. 

Life is of me, saitli the Lord ; and life is 
mine. Give it back to me, and I will save it. 
Render it up in sacrifice, and I will redeem it. 

This is the sign of the slain lamb, of the 
blood upon the doorposts of man's going out 
and coming in ; and of the Lord, holding judg- 
ment in his hand, passing by in mercy. 

It would have been just as true for the 
Egyptian as for the Israelite ; but through 
the Israelite the gospel of it was given to the 
world. 

"Eat of the passover, shod, with thy staff 
in thy hand ; " ready, instantly, to follow the 
Lord's bidding. 

It is a double passing-over ; it is man's 
pass-over to God's side, renouncing his bond- 
age to Egypt, and standing shod and ready to 
follow and serve the Lord ; it is God's Pass- 
over of Redemption, putting by repented evils 



160 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

and old, sinful, slotMul worldly servitude, and 
beginning with his child a new leading into 
peace and safety and freedom. Henceforth, 
every step is to be out of the strange land 
toward the Home Land, the Land of PromisCo 

The moment a life turns to God, and facing 
about upon itself abjures its old wrong, con- 
demning it in the conscience of God's truth, 
that instant and thenceforward the whole might 
of God is for mercy ; against the sin — to de- 
stroy and blot it out and make it as though it 
had never been, as to the life out of which it 
is cast, but only a knowledge gained against 
such evil forever ; and, for the repenting child^ 
to undo, and prevent, and pass over, the of- 
fense, estrangement, penalty. " All things " 
begin to " work together for good, to them 
who " begin to " love God, who are the called 
according to his purpose." 

This, and nothing else, or short of it, is Sal- 
vation. 

The gospel is hidden in the first Paschal 
service, — the first shielding and sparing in 
the midst of judgment, according to open con- 
dition and covenant. 

There was wrong and sin in the dwellings of 
the Israelites, as well as of the Egyptians ; but 



THE LORD'S PASSOVER 161 

the dealing with the one was different from 
the dealing with the other, as the attitude 
and relation of the two peoples was different 
with the Lord himself. To bring Egypt to the 
right, and to the knowledge and confession of 
heavenly truth, it was still needful that pen- 
alty — which is Divine Teaching of immuta- 
ble truth — should have its continued work. 
Egypt would come no other way. But the 
moment a people, or a soul, surrenders wholly 
to the Eternal Righteousness, that moment the 
Eternal Righteousness imputes itself to the 
returning prodigal, and Eternal Love works 
altogether in his behalf. The remission of sin 
begins. 

The Passover, indeed, has to be eaten with 
" bitter herbs," and with bread from which the 
old leaven has been utterly rejected. Re- 
pentance, — a new life, — only with these is 
given the absolution. 

Law, which they did not recognize or con- 
fess as God's, had its wonderful way with the 
Egyptians. There befell them what we call 
a " strange poetical justice ; " but a justice 
which is shaped in the eternal nature and 
trend of things and deed ; of spiritual force 
set in action by ill or .good in spirit, act, life, 



162 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

— by obedience or transgression of inmost 
truth and good ; and which takes its form, far 
more often than we perceive or trace, after 
the very hkeness, and in the selfsame relation 
with, the sin. 

The Egyptians had sought to keep the He- 
brews in slavery ; and lest they should grow 
too strong, they had ordered that every man 
child of Israel should be slain at its birth. 

The Lord God would have both Hebrews 
and Egyptians in allegiance — not in slavery, 
but in the " liberty of the truth " — to him- 
self ; and lest they should grow too strong 
against their own best life, by transmission and 
perpetuation of evil, there came upon the evil 
nation, in the order of His Providence, which 
handles all causes and events, the smiting of 
its own firstborn. Undoubtedly, the firstborn 
sons ; " from the firstborn of Pharaoh upon the 
throne to the firstborn of the maid servant be- 
hind the mill, and the captive in the dungeon ; 
and all the firstborn of beasts and cattle." 
Truly saith the Lord God, " Ye shall sanctify 
to me exiery firstborn creature ; it is mine." 
And if his own be not given to Him, his might 
can claim it. 

" Ye shall set apart unto the Lord every 



THE LORD'S PASSOVER 163 

firstling of a beast ; " and " all the firstborn of 
man slialt thou redeem " with sacrifice. 

The first is GocVs: with everything ye shall 
" seek first his kingdom and righteousness ; " 
only so can He, in his own best, everlasting 
way, add everything unto you. 

The first love, — the first service, — the 
chief jo}', — the chief possession : in tliem- 
selves, in their wholeness, in all that they are 
to men, they are to be continually rendered up. 
In the consciousness that they are of God, — 
in the very joy, in the very using, — they are to 
be a holy sacrifice ; so only can they be joy, or 
use, at all ; for they are of God already, and 
it is his purpose, his gladness, that comes to 
man by them. To recognize this, is to receive, 
in fullness ; to render up, is to have rendered 
back " a thousandfold, even in this present 
time ; and in the world to come " to have 
" life everlasting." 

The sign was in the altar sacrifice ; the 
"whole burnt - offering," carried up, in the 
flame of love, to the Love from wdience it came. 
The beautiful reality is in the whole heavenly 
life of them who forever, without pain or loss, 
shall " walk before Him in the light of the 
living." 



164 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

Now and again, God readies forth his hand 
and takes back his own ; not in anger, not 
eternally, but that man may know ; may follow 
his desire, and find it safe with the Father ; 
may learn to say " It is the Lord who taketh 
away, as it was He who gave ; yes, as it is He 
who shall give again. Blessed be the Name 
of the Lord." 

Judgment is not revenge ; it is a justifying ; 
a settmg right. " Shall not the Judge of all 
the earth do right ? " " The Lord shall judge 
his people.''^ " Is God unrighteous who taketh 
vengeance ? £I speak as a man) " saith Saint 
Paul ; " God forbid : for then how shall God 
judge " (set right) " the world ? " 

" Judgment " and " vengeance " have been 
sorely misinterpreted through human limit : 
divinely, widely, in the whole and at last, 
they mean " adjustment," — " vindication." 

Man's vengeance is a " getting equal " with 
his fellow, in an injury. God's vengeance is 
the conquering of wrong with right. " Is not 
my way equal ? Is not your way unequal ? " 
saith the Lord. 

The same thing was in the Plague and in 
the Passover ; it was the compelling and the 
leading ; always from evil, and toward the 



THE LORD'S PASSOVER 165 

good. God's hand, by the hand of Moses, 
dealt mightily with Egypt and with Israel ; it 
was to one end with all. 

The Laio of the Divine Ordering came by 
Moses : the grace and truth of it have come 
by Jesus Christ. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE SPOILING OF THE EGYPTIANS 

It was a rude justice that inspired Moses 
to tell the people, upon the eve of their flight, 
to borrow of their Egyptian neighbors their 
" jewels of gold and jewels of silver." Perhaps 
what Moses was able to believe in at this time 
was only stern force, relentless retribution ; 
what was behind these he felt only dimly ; the 
Will of God was grand, awful, resistless ; the 
justice of God was against the evil-doers, in all 
things. But in the later light, we may surely 
see deeper, and recognize blessed meanings 
which, after all, were at the heart of Moses' 
convictions, — his certainty of the " Thus 
saith the Lord," which justified his own com- 
mands. 

The wisdom of the kingdom is uttered in 
strange parables, which it is only given to them 
who enter into the mysteries to understand. 

Christ told the story of the unjust stew- 
ard, who cheated his lord in befriending his 



THE SPOILING OF THE EGYPTIANS 167 

fellows ; and he declared that the lord com- 
mended his unjnst steward, in that he had 
done wisely in his generation ; as far as he 
had the nature to do, — as far as he had — 
yet — been born into doing. 

And Jesus added his own command, which 
has perplexed many : *' And I say unto yoii^ 
Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of 
unrighteousness ; that when ye fail, they may 
receive you into everlasting habitations." 

Following instantly upon this word comes 
the seeming contradiction : " He that is faith- 
ful in little, is faithful also in much. If ye 
have not been faithful in the unrighteous 
mammon, who will commit to your trust the 
true riches ? " 

The only reconciling is the "good out of 
evil " which we are bidden to find and to make 
sure of. Make to yourselves opportunities for 
the righteousness of heaven out of the un- 
righteousness of earth. In the very things 
of self which men strive for to possess sep- 
arately, discover the means and implements 
for your work of brotherly love, — your ser- 
vice to the neighbor. The unjust steward, — 
according to his lights — acted for the largest 
benefit of his fellows. According to your 



168 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

lights and within the ordering of God and 
His Commandment, do ye likewise. For so 
you build for yourselves the everlasting habita- 
tions ; even the " habitation of God through 
the Spirit." 

Carry out with you into every larger, better 
phase of life, the best things — the lasting 
things — the really precious and beautiful 
things — of the life that has been. 

Even among the Egyptians, ye may gather 
jewels of silver and jewels of gold. They 
have robbed you ; ye have suffered their op- 
pressions ; but something ye may make them 
render back. Something lovely, — something 
of imperishable value, — they will have given 
into your hands. It is yours ; bear it away 
with you; it is the result of old labor, old 
endurance, old uncompensations. 

Out of the stress and deprival and struggle 
of this life, we shall bear away its best, in 
concentred worth and resplendence, to shine 
in our glad possession forever. It is the spoil 
of the Egyptians. 

Underneath the act which the Israelites 
committed, and which Moses sanctioned, but 
which as an outward act we condemn, lay this 
meaning, justification, promise. It was an 



THE SPOILING OF THE EGYPTIANS 169 

unuttered sense of this that impelled Moses ; 
we may receive and rejoice in it, while we 
discern and refuse for ourselves the outward 
wrong, the forcible or crafty righting of our- 
selves in outward things ; while we apprehend 
and obey the Chri^^tian precept, " Recompense 
to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest 
in the sight of all men. Avenge not your- 
selves : I will repay, saith the Lord." 



CHAPTER V 

THE CLOUD AND f HE FIEE 

In the strength of the faith of Moses and 
Aaron, the Children of Israel took their way 
into the wilderness. '•^They took their jour- 
ney," the text says ; but directly after it de- 
clares, " The Lord went hefore them to lead 
them the way: by day in a pillar of cloud, 
and by night in a pillar of fire." He gave 
them guidance, shielding, light. 

For forty years of day and night, the wil- 
derness was to be their world. A whole gen- 
eration was to pass away, a whole generation 
to be born and grow, while they traveled. A 
whole story of life was to be enacted in that 
desert tract of country, where, nevertheless, 
the Lord would lead and feed them, give them 
bread to eat and water to drink, and show 
them all their way. All their way from 
Egypt to Canaan ; from servitude and sorrow 
to freedom, and the beautiful, plentiful Land 
of God. 



THE CLOUD AND THE FIRE 171 

He himself icent before them. He himself, 
in tlie cloud of a gracious mystery, in the glow 
and glory of his Presence. He veiled him- 
self, sparing them the too awful and continual 
blaze of Deity ; he lifted up light upon them 
when they needed it in the heavy darkness. 
He gave himself to them in as much and in 
as near as they could bear. 

Their " Spiritual Rock followed them ; " 
companied with them. " And that Rock was 
Christ." God was already in the world in his 
Christhood ; in his close abiding and sharing 
with men. 

And this was the Believing of Moses, and 
his leading of the Children of Israel. 

Whatever the external sign of it was, the 
Presence never left them. " He took not away 
the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar 
of fire by night, from before the people." 

'' For he said, Surely they are my people : 
... so he was their Saviour. In all their 
afflictions he was afflicted, and the Angel of 
his Presence saved them : in his love and in 
his pity he redeemed them." 

Look unto the Lord. That was the lesson, 
and the comfort, the strength, and the peace, 
and the. assurance of the wilderness. Is there 



172 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

any other, now or ever, in the wilderness of 
mortal living and earthly journeying ? 

" Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the 
ends of the earth ; for I am God, and there is 
none else." 

" Look unto the Eock whence ye are hewn." 

" Make thy face to shine upon thy servant : 
save me for thy mercies' sake ; " . . . " that 
I may walk before God in the light of the 
living." 

" Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that com- 
pass yourselves about with sparks : walk in 
the light of your " own " fire, and the sparks 
that ye have kindled. ... Ye shall lie down 
in sorrow." 

" Oh that I were as in the days when God 
preserved me : when his candle shined upon 
my head, and by his light I walked in dark- 
ness." 

" O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us 
walk in the light of the Lord." 

" Who is among you that feareth the Lord, 
and obeyeth the voice of his servant, that 
walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let 
him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay 
upon his God." 



THE CLOUD AND THE FIRE 173 

" Our fellowship is with the Father, and 
with his Son Jesus Christ. This is the mes- 
sage which we have heard of him, and declare 
unto you, that God is light, and in him is no 
darkness at all." 

"I am the Light of the World ; he that 
abideth in me shall not walk in darkness, but 
shall have the light of life." 

" The Light which lighteth every man that 
Cometh into the world." 

" God, who commanded the light to shine 
out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to 
give the light of the knowledge of the glory 
of God in the face of Jesus Christ." 

" The city had no need of the sun, . . . for 
the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb 
is the light thereof." 

Jesus — Christ. The Cloud of the human, 
— the Glory of the Divine. 

The Word made flesh, that it might dwell 
among us : the Glory of the Only Begotten, 
moving before the world, to lead it through 
its night-time to the Everlasting Day. 

Moses, David, Isaiah, Job in his lament ; 
every prophet and teacher and believer of the 
truth, through the whole Bible Record, to the 
Christ Visible himself, and the apostles who 



174 EVEXTS OF THE EXODUS 

walked wlrli him in the earrlily. and saw the 
vision? of the Heavenly in his Transtignrarion. 
his Glorilieatiou. and the open splendors of 
his Xew Jernsalem, — tell ns the same thing, 
— of the Shadow and the Shining. — the Guid- 
ing and Abiding, — which are rhe Presence of 
the Lord God. 

•• Come nccr/' before the Lord." commanded 
Moses to the complaining people. •* And be- 
hold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the 
cloud."' 

•• I will appear in the clond upon the mercy- 
seat.*" 

The Cloud and the Fire are one. 

Thev are the Leadino-. Protectino-. Showino; 
in the wilderness. 

By faith of them Moses followed, and drew 
after him the hosts — even the rebellious, up- 
braiding-, untrustino- hosts — of the cono-reo-a- 
tion of Israel. 

The Cloud and the Fire are one. 

There is a veiled, and there is an Immediate 
Presence. 

In aU natural things, in aU natural circum- 
stances, in the life and work of every dai/, 
God U?nits himself to us; He goes before us, 



THE CLOTSD AXD THE FIRE 175 

in a hidden majesty, to lead us the way. He 
covers himself, in his gift and providence, in 
his commandment, his teaching, his speaking 
with men, with the law and condition of the 
earthly. Even Moses, when he came forth 
from the Intimate Glory, to give the word of 
the Lord to the people, spoke to them '' with a 
veil upon his face : " and he kept the veil upon 
his face until he went in to speak with the 
Lord again. 

A beautiful veil was hung before the place 
of the Ark of the Testimony : it was " between 
the holy and the Most Holy place." 

Christ came, and walked, in the earthly : 
•• in the veil of his flesh ; '' to show men the 
way, through the earthly. 

In the night-time, when the earthly was 
withdrawn. He came in the Fire of the Holy 
Ghost- and gave himseK to his own. 

In the e very-day. the common, the rudi- 
mentary. God is in the Cloud, before us : in 
the hour and the power of the spirit, when it 
pauses and separates from the natural, and 
the natural is put away as into its own dark- 
ness, then the Lord comes with inner tran- 
scendent light into the very soul. Then 
He teaches, leads, speaks, straight from the 



176 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

Divine, into the divine He has divided to us, 
to be as ourselves. 

" The Pillar of the Cloud went before the 
people by day, to lead them the way ; and the 
Pillar of Fire by night, to give them light. ''^ 

The Pillar of the Cloud, and the Pillar of 
the Fire, are One. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE RED SEA 

The Children of Israel, led by the Lord's 
command through Moses, went out into the 
Wilderness and encamped by the sea. And 
the Egyptians followed them, surrounded 
them, and hemmed them in. 

More or less, the Israelites had been willing 
slaves in the land of Egypt. More or less, 
they were looking back, even now, upon such 
security, such comfort of the flesh and of in- 
dolent, irresponsible submission, as they had 
had in their bondage. Now, they had made 
enemies utterly, and to the death, of their old 
taskmasters. Their Past pursued them, as it 
pursues every soul that departs out of Egypt 
to follow the Lord to the land which He will 
provide. " Behold, the Egyptians marched 
after them ; and they were sore afraid." 

Not yet had they come into the promised 
peace and safety. Not yet were they out of 
reach of their old mis6rableness. Their old 



178 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

evils followed hard upon them, and would 
not let them go. " We would better have 
stayed ! " they cried out to Moses. " We 
might as well have been content. We shall 
die here in the wilderness. The vengeance of 
the wicked is come upon us." 

" Wait. Fear not. Stand still. Ye shall 
see the salvation of the Lord. The Egyptians 
whom ye have seen to-day, ye shall see them 
again no more forever. The Lord shall fight 
for you, and ye shall hold your peace." That 
was the grand word which Moses answered to 
their terrified souls. 

It is the word of assurance against all the 
evil of men's past. 

" Speak to the children of Israel that they 
go foricard : lift up thy rod, and stretch out 
thy hand over the sea, and divide it : the chil- 
dren of Israel shall go on dry ground through 
the midst of the sea." 

There shall be no hopelessness, no destruc- 
tion or confounding, to them who believe in 
me, and follow after my command, whatsoever 
bondage or corruption they may have come 
out from, saith the Lord, in the word of this 
wonderful history. That which has enslaved 
and debased them may pursue them with con- 



THE RED SEA 179 

demiiation, with threatening, with fear and 
shame ; but it shall not seize nor conquer 
them, nor follow them forever. Its power 
over them is gone ; I myself will beat it back. 

" I will get me honor upon the host of 
them." 

" And the Angel of God which went before 
the camp of Israel, removed and went behind 
them ; and it came between the camp of the 
Egyptians and the camp of Israel ; and it was 
a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave 
light by night to these : so that the one came 
not near the other all the night." 

The Presence of the Lord is both before 
and behind ; it is between man and his past, 
when the past accuses and threatens him ; and 
that which he has forsaken for the Lord shall 
not overtake him to destroy him. The Lord 
himself will interpose between the old un- 
righteousness and the new purity ; He will 
be a cloud and a darkness to hide the hateful 
thing out of the better life ; to this it shall 
only be as a burning light and a shining mercy 
of admonition and forgiveness, to encourage 
and make plain and safe the going in the 
forward way. Through all night of doubt, 
through all gloom of dread and self-reproach, 



180 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

it. shall be both shield and assurance ; cover- 
ing and manifestation. 

Moses stretched out his hand over the sea ; 
over the deep waters that the people had to 
pass, and which had seemed to shut them back 
among their enemies : " and the Lord caused 
the sea to go back, by a strong east wind, 
all that night, and made the sea dry, and the 
waters divided. And the children of Israel 
went into the midst of the sea upon the dry 
ground ; and the waters," which had forbid- 
den them and made them afraid, " were a 
wall un^io them upon their right hand and on 
their left." 

And through the pillar of fire and cloud the 
Lord looked upon the Egyptians, and troubled 
them, and took off their chariot wheels ; and 
again he commanded Moses, Stretch out thine 
hands over the sea. And the sea returned 
to his strength, and the Lord overthrew the 
Egyptians in the midst of the sea. 

Beforehand, He gave them the great sign 
of the prophet Micah : " He will subdue our 
iniquities ; and thou wilt cast all their sins 
into the depths of the sea." 

It was the same sign that Christ gave, when 



THE RED SEA 181 

He sent the devils out of the possessed men 
into the herd of swine, and the herd of swine 
into the sea to perish in the waters. 

The evil thing shall perish ; the Lad past 
shall not follow and overcome. As soon as it 
is the past, and not any living, present part 
of us, the Lord can destroy it and save us 
alive. It is all He waits for. 

" Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out 
of the hand of the Egyptians. And Israel 
saw the great work which the Lord did upon 
the Egyptians ; and the people believed the 
Lord, and his servant Moses." 

Believed, — what ? 

It was not the event, the doing, that called 
for act of faith. That had passed before their 
eyes. " They saio the great work ; and they 
believed the Lord, and his servant Moses." 

It was not history, to them, to be ques- 
tioned, sifted, caviled at ; it was present fact, 
actual experience. In it, the Lord had been 
with them ; they believed that. He had stood 
between them and their enemies ; between 
their horrible past and their hoped-for future ; 
they knew and believed that. He would be, 
in like manner, their Guide and their Defense 
forever. In that moment of exaltation, they 



182 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

believed all this ; and it remained with them 
strongly enough to be handed down, in a 
wonderful recital and creed, from generation 
to generation of their descendants. 

And Moses and the Children of Israel sang 
together a great song of triumph : — 

" I will sing unto the Lord, for He hath 
triumphed gloriously : the horse and his rider 
hath He thrown into the sea. The Lord is 
my strength and my song, and He is become 
my salvation. . . . 

" In the greatness of thine excellency thou 
hast overthrown them that rose up against 
thee. . . . 

" The enemy said, I will pursue, I will over- 
take, I will divide the spoil : my lust shall be 
satisfied upon them. I will draw my sword, 
my hand shall destroy them. 

" Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea 
covered them ; they sank as lead in the mighty 
waters." 

It was the wind, the east wind; we are 
told to-day that " the miracle of the Red Sea 
has happened again." A surveying officer of 
the British Government reports it as having 
occurred to his own observation. " A wind 



THE RED SEA 183 

arose so fierce that within a few hours it had 
driven the entire waters of Lake Menzahieh 
out of sight beyond the horizon, leaving all 
the sailing vessels resting on the sandy bed." 
" This," says the journal reporting Major- 
General Tulloch's statement, " answers to the 
description in the Bible ; and the miracle 
turns out to be a phenomenon of nature." 

Equally logical, and far truer, it woidd be 
to say. Every phenomenon of nature turns out 
to be a miracle of the will of God. 

It was an east wind, the Mosaic story tells 
us, simply ; but it was the Lord's wind, and 
held his purpose in it. That was the faith 
it taught Moses and the Israelites ; that was 
what they believed about it. And it enabled 
them, looking forward with joy and certainty 
to God's further leading and salvation, to 
sing on : — 

" Thou, in thy mercy, hast led forth the 
people thou hast redeemed : thou hast guided 
them in thy strength to thy holy habitation. 
. . . Thou slialt bring them in, and plant 
them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in 
the place, O Lord, which thou hast made for 
thee to dwell in ; in the Sanctuary, O Lord, 
which thy hands have established. 



184 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

" The Lord shall reign for ever and ever ! " 
Verily, is not this the Song of Moses and of 
the Lamb, sung in the Revelation of all things 
by them who have gotten the victory, and 
stand upon the sea of glass mingled with fire, 
and who have in their hands the harps of 
God? 



CHAPTER VII 

THE HUNGER AND THIRST OF THE 
WILDERNESS 

In tlie joy of their deliverance, in the awe 
of the might of the Lord which had built up 
the sea of peril to be a wall of safety to them, 
and in it had cast to utter annihilation the 
evil power and threat and tyranny of their 
past, — in the strength of the Song of Moses, 
— the Israelites went on their way. 

But they had yet to pass the wilderness. 
They had to learn to believe God in long de- 
lays, in weariness, and hunger, and thirst, and 
pain, as they had believed Him when with 
his sudden outstretched arm He had wrought 
visibly and mightily in their behalf. They 
had to come to the faith that in every little 
thing, — in their daily bread and the supply 
of water for their thirst, in strength for their 
march, in place and provision for their rest, 
in the very washing of their garments, — God's 
care and ordering were* with them, his mean- 



186 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

ings were spoken to their souls. It was to 
be a continual sacrament. So they were to 
be trained to feel Him, to lean upon Him, to 
follow Him, to listen to Him. By these things 
they were to " be ready " for the glorious and 
tremendous manifestations of Presence and 
Authority that in their hour should come. 
The rough and barren way through the desert 
of Sin (place of the cliffs) was to be trodden 
in dependence and trust, till in the majestic 
solitudes of Horeb they should come to the 
foot of its great peak of Sinai, from whose 
flame and smoke the Voice of Him should 
break forth whose silent o^uidance of lig^ht and 
cloud had been their sign and stay by night 
and day ; whose word and answer to all their 
askings — even their murmurings and rebel- 
lions — had thus far been in gift, defense, 
satisfying ; the meeting of their outward needs 
with instant helps. They had been cared for 
like little children, that they might be led up 
into the strength of manhood. 

The Lord always " sj)ake unto Moses " in 
the sense of his inner truth. " Say unto the 
children of Israel, ... ye shall eat flesh, . . . 
ye shall be filled with bread ; ye shall know 
that I am the Lord your God." When they 



THE HUNGER AND THIRST 187 

found tlie " small, round thing," left by the 
dew, lying " upon the face of the wilderness," 
and knew that they were to be saved from their 
hunger, they said, " It is — What is it f " 
For " manna " is of the words " man hu," 
meaning just this question. " And Moses said 
unto them. This is the bread which the Lord 
hath given you to eat." In all things, "It is 
the Lord," was the lesson of their living. 
God never left Moses to his own struggles and 
devices, or to think that he was so left. He 
had said, " Surely I will be with thee ; " and 
at every fresh need came the word, " / will 
do this for you." " / will rain bread from 
heaven for you." " / will stand before thee 
there, upon the rock in Horeb ; and thou shalt 
smite the rock, and there shall come water 
out of it, that the people may drink." And 
Moses believed the Lord, and the people be- 
lieved Moses. 

In the wdlderness of the world to-day, — in 
the crowding and rushing of wonders, — the 
very gifts of God by his marvelous power, — 
where is Moses, to stand up and say of each 
successive revelation and benefit, " Behold, 
this is given to you by the Lord your God ; " 
it is He who calls forth for you the hidden 



188 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

secrets of the earth, and the life of it, for your 
strength and using ? And where is the people, 
in whatever material dullness yet held and 
hindered, to confess and give praise at each 
new finding, and to " lay up before the Lord " 
a sacred reserve and memorial, " to be kept for 
their generations ? " 

Whatever the blindness, the forgetfulness, 
the time-serving, the self-seeking, of the He- 
brew children, they were yet as children in their 
hearts, learning the faith of the Lord. 

Faith was the one thing God was deter- 
mined to give them ; it was the one thing 
insisted on ; it was the one thing in which 
failure, recusance, apostasy, was not tolerated ; 
was not pardoned, till bitterly atoned for. 

In the further experience of their pilgrim- 
age, after they left Mount Sinai, we have exam- 
ple and record of this, to which we shall come 
in due order. But first, intermediate between 
their early leadings and disciplines and the 
graver tests of their believings and obedience, 
with the fearful judgments of their presump- 
tions and disloyalties, we pause, as they did, 
before the Mountain of Manifestation, the 
place of the utterance of the Law, — the com- 
mands for their common living, — delivered 



THE HUNGER AND THIRST 189 

out of heights inaccessible, that burned with 
lightnings and sounded with great thunders. 

In this Giving of the Law, see also the ever- 
lasting significances. 

The " Thou shalt " of the obligations be- 
tween man and God, and the " Thou shalt not " 
of things forbidden between men and men, are 
the orders of continual, lowly, primitive obser- 
vance : they do not reveal, nor foretell ; they 
are simply and uncompromisingly, Do, — and 
Do Not : but they are spoken down into our 
earthly plan and condition out of the everlast- 
ing Majesties and the ineffable Awf ulness ; out 
of the Being and Law of God himself, and his 
own Action : they are tremendous with issues 
which Almightiness itself acknowledges, and 
towards whose truth and justice it rules itself. 

And yet, — mark where it is put, in the 
middle of the Decalogue, — in the heart of 
the law stands the " one commandment with 
promise ; " the one gently given, as touching 
human hearts ; it alone has no " shall " nor 
"shall not;" it appeals to our affections, — 
our love of kindred, land, Jiome ; it alone 
does foretell, and offer motive, — the " days 
long in the land," and with our own ; it is the 
beginning of the law of our dearest life, — it 



190 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

is the link between our worship of God and 
our just relation with our fellow men ; it has 
the statutes for the one on the one side, and 
for the other on the other ; it is the lovely 
clasp that holds our spiritual and our earthly 
together ; it is, as it were, the " Lamb in the 
midst of the Throne." This, also, because 
of the deep and infinite Law of God's own 
Nature. 

" In the third month . . . they were come 
to the desert of Sinai, and had pitched in the 
wilderness ; and Israel camped before the 
mount : and Moses went up unto God." 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE MOUNTAIN 

A MOUNTAIN is a liigii place. It is the lift- 
ing up of sometliing of the earth toward the 
heaven. The heaven comes clown and broods 
upon the mountain ; in clouds, in light and 
glory ; with awful stillness, and with awful 
voices. The thunder and the avalanche are 
there, — the great Rest, and Strength, and 
Peace are there also. They who walk in spir- 
itual high places feel the call and the help of 
the hills. It is natural to climb into them ; 
to carry thought and seeking into their great 
altitudes and deej) solitudes. The prophets 
found the presence of God in the mountains ; 
they prophesied of the coming of the Lord 
and his dwelling with his people, as to be upon 
the mountains ; " in his holy mountain," where 
He would " bring " his people, and " make 
them joyful in his house of prayer." 

Christ spoke the word of Life first from 
a mountain ; he watched and prayed in a 



192 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

mountain - top ; he was transfigured upon a 
mountain ; he met his chosen, after his resur- 
rection, upon a mountain of Galilee. He led 
them out, at last, " as far as Bethany," on the 
farther slope of the Mount of Olives, to say 
his last words to them, to lift up his hands 
upon them with his blessing, and "while he 
blessed them " to be " parted from them and 
carried up into heaven." The mountains of 
the earth reach very near the unseen heights 
of the celestial. 

" The Lord called unto Moses out of the 
mountain " of Sinai. He spoke to him there 
the things that he should tell the people. It 
was the handing down of faith — of sure be- 
lieving — through the heart and mind and by 
the speech of a man filled with his own be- 
lieving by the instant utterance of God, — to 
the acceptance of the men who waited far 
below ; who could not bear the thunders of 
God's speaking, nor the lightnings of his 
Presence. And how was it that this belief 
conveyed itself so absolutely, so unquestioned, 
to the minds of the dull, fearful, obstinate 
Israelites ? Why did not they begin to say, 
" How do we know this thing ? How shall 
we receive it, hearing it only from this man 



THE MOUNTAIN 193 

Moses ? " Why was it left for a people ages 
onward, between whom and this first one 
leader and believer stretches all the line of 
teachers, apostles, prophets of both Old and 
New Testimonies, to demur, and ask in a 
proud unsatisf action, " Where is the proof of 
these old say-sos ? " 

The Children of Israel had begun to be- 
lieve in a God already manifest in their 
oivn lives. They had learned this alphabet 
of faith ; they had spelled some syllables of 
heavenly language that sets signs in the 
things of earth. They were ready for fur- 
ther message in the same speech. They knew 
what had been done for them by the hand of 
God, strengthening with a more than mortal 
might the hand of Moses. They knew, even in 
their limit and ignorance, what was only man- 
mighty, and what was God-Almighty. They 
felt the power of the Holy Ghost, though the 
Holy Ghost had not been named to them by 
that Name. It is the sin against the Holy 
Ghost that condemns — so long as they are in 
it — the unbelievers of this generation. 

"Ye have seen," said the Lord, '-'-what I 
did, . . . And how I bare you on eagles' 
wings, and brought you unto myself." Now 



194 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

I will give you plain commandment, for these 
lives of yours in which you know me. " And 
if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my 
covenant," — keep and cherish this faith and 
knowledge of my meeting and abiding with 
you in the life of your soul and body, — " ye 
shall be a peculiar treasure unto me. All the 
earth is mine ; ye shall be to me a kingdom of 
priests, a holy nation." 

And Moses came and told these words of 
God to the people ; and all the people an- 
swered together, " All that the Lord hath 
spoken we will do." 

" And the Lord said unto Moses, Lo, I 
come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the 
people may hear when I speak with thee, and 
believe thee forever." 

" And Moses told the word of the people 
unto the Lord." 

Did not the Lord know? Was it in hu- 
man words that Moses repeated the respon- 
sive vow of the Israelites to Him? Or did 
he only lift up his full heart-consciousness, 
thrilled with the Divine message and its an- 
tiphon, before his God, with a " Thou seest : 
Thou hast heard " ? We cannot say ; we can- 
not sound those Sinai mysteries ; we do not 



THE MOUNTAIN 195 

know the mystery of our own prayers. We 
may say words ; perhaps that is for our own 
self-definiDg' and understanding ; that we may 
realize what it is in us that we do "lift up 
unto the Lord." 

God always chooses a man when He would 
speak with men. He takes a man apart, 
and tells him what He would have all people 
know. And the men who already believe 
God to be in their lives recognize his messen- 
gers and their errands when they come. 

Belief can come of belief no other way. 
We may say, " We know our Moses ; we 
have trust in him. We can see that he is 
on a height, where he can discern more than 
we ; where great speech comes to him that we 
cannot hear for ourselves, but only from his 
mouth. We are the children of Abraham ; 
we believe Moses and the prophets." That 
suffices for them who will receive Moses ; to 
those who will not, it will not avail though 
one of their own kindred shoidd arise from 
the dead. In the last proving and behind 
all, it is God himself whom we must believe. 
" He that is of God heareth God's voice." 
He only. Without Him, we cannot even rec- 
ognize his Son. " He that believeth on the 



196 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

Son hath life. He that believeth not, is 
condemned already." 

How are we to get this life, then ? 

That was what the young ruler — it was 
also what the tempting man of the law — 
asked of Jesus of Nazareth. And the an- 
swer to each was, " Keep the Command- 
ments." When you have done that, you will 
have entered in. When you have done that, 
and have not found entrance, you may stand 
and cavil at the gates. 

But it must be a keeping that from the out- 
side letter shall search into, find, and obey, 
the inmost heart. The heart of the Com- 
mandment is the Heart of God. It is with 
heart, and mind, and strength, that He will 
be sought, and found, and loved. And the 
neighbor — against whom is to be done no 
wrong — is to be found also, and loved, and 
served, in the heart of living, as another self. 
If you think you have done all by not doing 
him ill, try the other side of the command- 
ment, and divide with him your good. 

There are but two commands in the whole 
Two Tables. Upon the essential soul of these 
hang all the law and the prophets. 

Again, — for human conduct, as in the Di- 



THE MOUNTAIN 197 

vine Ordering of human life, — tlie Law was 
made known by Moses ; the heavenly grace, 
the fulfilling truth, came by Jesus Christ. 

We, to-day, may read the pages of the Old 
Law with the pages of the New waiting, 
folded beneath our fingers. The Children of 
Israel, in the Wilderness, had only the two 
tables of stone. 

How did they read, or hear them ? 

How did Moses, the Mediator into whose 
heart and hand they were given to deliver, 
apprehend them both in their present power 
and in the potentiality of their yet further 
unfolding under a more glorious ministration ? 



CHAPTER IX 

THE TEN SAYINGS 

" Sanctify the people, to-day and to-mor- 
row, and let them wash their clothes, and be 
ready against the third day. The third day 
the Lord will come down in the sight of all 
the people, upon Mount Sinai." 

Put away all defilement ; make at least the 
outer raiment of your life clean. Then ye 
may come up to the foot of the holy moun- 
tain ; then the Lord God, descending in his 
glory upon its ^079, will meet you there. " The 
third day ; " after the day of sanctifying, and 
the day of making clean. Even the com- 
mandment should not be given till the people 
had done that which they already knew. The 
primal commandment was in their hearts from 
the beginning : they knew the clean from the 
unclean. Come clean of all gross, known 
wickedness, before the Lord your God; then 
He will tell you further. 

And Moses believed and carried the word : 



THE TEN SAYINGS 199 

the people of Israel also, again, believed the 
word of Moses. 

This indeed loas the inclusive Command- 
ment : Put away all wickedness, and come up 
before the Lord your God, and He will come 
to you, and speak with you. The ten precepts 
are the divided words, — the setting forth in 
analysis of what God has to say and to require. 
They are so called in the ancient Scripture ; 
the Words of the Covenant, — of the meeting 
together of God and man ; the Words of the 
Testimony, — the practical attestations of eter- 
nal truth ; the particular rules of the life by 
which men may be alive forever. 

It was no new thing, no arbitrary imposi- 
tion, this inmost Truth of Life, and its con- 
dition ; no afterthought introduced into the 
economy of God's government; it was what 
had been from the beginning ; it was the law 
of the abiding of men with the Lord, and their 
continual creation from the divine. The or- 
dering of all act and motive from this inmost 
reality and command is what the Decalogue 
— the Ten Words — sets forth, item by item, 
in plain, categorical distinctness. 

Moses saw and believed the absolute, inte- 
gral truth. The people must be led to it by a 



200 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

fractional understanding and acceptance, and 
an external obedience. 

The Lord commanded Moses to go down 
among the multitudes at the mountain foot, 
and to keep them there. " Let not the priests 
and the people hreah through to come up unto 
the Lord, lest He break forth upon them." 

The kingdom of heaven is not to be scaled 
by temerity, nor taken by violence. The aw- 
fulness of God's Presence is not to be con- 
fronted unprepared, or with assurance. We 
may not seize with naked hand even the mate- 
rial forces of his creation. We are set at safe 
distance from his sun, which energizes earth 
with its vitality. Heat and light are appor- 
tioned to us ; we may not think to reach and 
touch their intense origination. The Lord 
will show himself to us as we can bear ; as 
He can make us ready to receive Him. He 
will give us that of himself which shall bless, 
and not consume us. The fire of hell is the 
consciousness of God in the evil and unfitted 
soul. 

" And God spahe all these words.'''' 

So sayeth the Record, without intermediate 
explanation. And thereafter follow immedi- 
ately the Ten Great and Divine Sayings. 



THE TEN SAYINGS 201 

How did the people hear them ? 

" All the people saw " (and heard) " the 
thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise 
of the trumpet " (some clear, marvelous sound 
that rang through all), "and the mountain 
smoking ; and when the people saw it, they 
removed, and stood afar off." 

Even this was as a " breaking forth " upon 
their fearfulness, their weak unworthiness. It 
was v/itli them, and je,t more awfully, as with 
Peter, when he cried out at the wonder-work- 
ing of the Lord, " Depart from me, for I am 
a sinful man I " 

Infinite Power searches human conscience 
and makes it afraid. How can a man see 
God, and live ? 

The Israelites believed, but with a mortal 
terror. They had only come as far as "the 
mount that burned with fire." Mount Zion, 
the City of the Living God, the heavenly 
Jerusalem, the home of the " innumerable 
company of angels and the spirits of just men 
made perfect," was yet, in its lovely glory, to 
be revealed. They said to Moses, " Speak 
thou with us, and we will hear ; but let not 
God speak with us, lest we die." 

And Moses said unto the people, " Fear not : 



202 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

God is come to prove you," — to show you what 
you may be, — to reveal to you your own na- 
ture, — to establish you in his truth, and in 
everlasting agreement with himself ; " that his 
fear may be hefore your faces ^ that ye sin not." 

Not terror would He cause in them, nor in 
any hearts of men ; not dread of a pursuing 
vengeance or retribution, but a holy fear, he- 
forehand^ that should keep them from offend- 
ing ; a true reverence, awe, worship. They 
were not to be afraid ; but they were to be 
possessed in all their souls with devout appre- 
hension of the Greatness that is infinite : of 
the Goodness so large and high, the Tender- 
ness so deep and strong, that they are awful. 

The people remained afar off, and Moses 
drew near ; " unto the thick darkness where 
God was." 

The law was " ordained in the hand of a 
mediator." It had to be so. The people 
could not come up into the mount ; they were 
afraid, and strange. They were separate from 
God. That was why the law itself had to 
be ; it was " added because of transgression." 
Men need the Law, and the Mediator, because 
they have departed from the Promise. 

The law came to bring back, and to insure, 



THE TEN SAYINGS 203 

the promise ; the promise was " long before, 
confirmed of God in Christ," — in the son- 
hood. " The law could not disannul it." It 
is by the Promise that we recognize the Law. 
It is the hope born in us — the " inheritance 
of promise " — that confesses to the command- 
ment. Need we ask, then, " Shall we believe 
the Mediator ? " And " Where is his author- 
it}^?" Is not his authority the very law it- 
self ? Is it not " holy, and just, and good ? " 
If nothing of the wholeness, justice, goodness, 
is in us, whereby to see that, we may indeed be 
afraid, and beg Moses to put his own person 
between us and the Lord. 

If God live in us, we shall understand his 
saying. It will vouch for itself. It is one 
with our own vitality. Upon Mount Sinai, 
and in his children's hearts, God is One. 
" And a Mediator is not a mediator of one." 
He is sent to show forth the oneness which 
needs no mediation. 

The great Gospel Mediation is the restoring 
and glorifying of the Promise ; it is the gift of 
it again, and in its fullness, " by faith of Jesus 
Christ." It is the everlasting confirmation of 
that oneness with God in Christ, which is be- 
fore and above the law. It is the Atonement. 



204 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

The Children of Israel had lapsed away 
from all this, since its beginning in Abraham ; 
so that, they had not come into their inherit- 
ance. They needed an ontward compelling ; 
a code of righteousness, specifically set down, 
of the obligation between man and God, and 
between man and his fellow. " The Law was 
a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ." The 
Law stands forever, because it is of the Truth. 
Truth is not of the Law. Christ, when he 
should come, would not indeed destroy, but 
he would needs fulfill. He would open up the 
great beauty of the perfect rightness, of the ut- 
termost meaning and requirement of the truth, 
which is the Life. 

Toward this, through the wilderness, with 
their Ten Words on the Two Tables, which 
were to be laid up forever in the Ark of the 
Testimony, the Hebrew people were to begin 
their forward spiritual march, not knowing all 
the light into which it was to lead them ; not 
witting of the far-off Coming of their King, 
the Immanuel, — " God with us," — of the 
Regeneration. 

Neither did Moses know it all ; but he be- 
lieved the Lord, and all the words the Lord 
gave to him, them he gave straightway to his 
people. 



THE TEN SAYINGS 205 

Moses did not even live to come into the 
earthly Canaan ; long after him, the Judges 
and the Kings and the Seers successively and 
together wrought out the wonderful signifi- 
cant story of the Chosen Nation in the Prom- 
ised Land ; but when the Son of Man walked 
there with his disciples, giving them his New 
Testament, and in the vision of that other 
mountain put on before them his exceeding 
glory, the Prophet of the Exodus, and Elias, 
witness for Jehovah before the kings, stood 
also in shining garments beside their Lord, 
and talked with Him of that which He should 
accomplish at Jerusalem. 

Truly the work and the word were one ; and 
the human history was one, and the long, slow 
centuries of its time - unfolding were as no- 
thing. 

The Ten Sayings of Moses were the Two of 
Christ. 

Believe in the Lord God, the Leader of 
your life out of the house of bondage. 

Have no other gods but Me : look to no 
power but mine. 

Make no image or likeness of anything to 
yourselves, — no hewn or graven form for 
beauty or reverence in the place of my Beauty 



206 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

and Worship ; no sensuously imaged and lim- 
ited thing, no pictured vision, no rejDresentation 
to yourselves of anything in the tangible or 
intangible, in the high or the low, or in the 
hidden secrets of my creation, — to seek or to 
serve apart from Me ; to bow down to in your 
will and your desire, and your giving of your- 
selves in soul and purpose. I am a jealous 
God. I will have you give yourselves to no- 
thing short of Me. For in Me only is your 
life. It is your own life that I am jealous for. 
I have made you for myself, and I will have 
you, that I may give you all. If you worship 
these things instead of ]\Ie, your iniquity shall 
follow you, and your children, where my loving- 
kindness should have been; the unequalness 
that you make of your life shall be handed 
down into aud visited upon the lives of the 
third and fourth generations. 

3Iy Name is in all things ; all things de- 
clare Me : receive all things in My Name, and 
profane it not, nor take it to your own vain, 
separate purpose. 

Keep holy time with Me ; keep my Rest 
of the Spirit that I keep in and after all my 
work. Rest ye on every seventh day, to re- 
member this : it is my Sabbath with you. 



THE TEN SAYINGS 207 

These are the Commandments that concern 
you with Me. 

Hold ye in all honor and love the relations 
in which I have put you with each other ; in 
families, and in your human kind ; for ye are 
all a family in the earth. Be loyal, upright, 
each one in your place and name ; do justly ; 
live purely ; that father and mother, tribe and 
race, be not shamed, but ennobled ; so that 
land and lineage, home and kindred, given you 
of the Lord, may endure, and be lifted up of 
Him forever. 

Kill not ; hurt not ; spoil not each other's 
life in any way. To wound life, to deprive it, 
is to take it, by just so much. 

Be not unclean : but keep your very body 
holy. 

Take nothing from your neighbor ; neither 
possession, nor time, nor opportunity, nor 
praise, nor rightful pleasure ; take nothing to 
yourself that is not rightly yours. 

Bear no false witness, nor say any malicious 
word, nor consent to any unjust reproach; 
neither cherish any secret uncharitableness ; 
for that is to bear false witness in your heart. 

And desire covetously nothing that is your 
neighbor's. 



208 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

These are the Commandments that concern 
you with each other. 

And the two are one ; for they are the Law 
of Life flowing forth from My Life into yours. 
And that is Love. 

How else than upon such inmost principle 
did Moses receive and record and publish the 
Ten Sayings ? 

Within that " thick darkness " and mystery 
and fear, — behind the cloud and the smoke 
and the lightnings, — where the leader of the 
Israelites went up serenely at God's call, 
knowing that the shining peace of his Pres- 
ence was at the heart of it, and listened for the 
Voice that came to him from out the invisible- 
ness of the Central Glory, — what had God 
to say and show to him but the interior word, 
the inspiring verity, that is behind all law and 
constitution, out of which all rule is expounded 
and all system built? Was it possible that 
Moses should be taken into less than the whole 
counsel of God, which should illuminate to 
him the types and statutes that he was to de- 
liver to the people with strenuous command 
for their observance ? 

Common men may live under exterior, tern- 



THE TEN SAYINGS 209 

porary system and be safe, without knowing 
why ; but they to whom it is given to devise 
and order have had the inner light upon that 
which represents ; the light of the unshaka- 
ble and everlasting. The servants who draw 
the water know. 

We are not told in the narrative how or 
how far this inspiration was then given. We 
are not told that at this first time Moses him- 
self, even, went in behind, to the heart of the 
" thick darkness " where the Glory was. But 
he was received loithin the fear ; close to 
God's side, as behind the bodily danger. He 
was able to come "near the thick darkness " 
that appalled them who were afar off, and to 
know that in that very darkness was the safe 
and loving Presence of the Lord. We find 
simply the declaration that the Commandments 
had been spoken unto all Israel from the 
height of Sinai and from out its tremendous 
environment, and that these Ten Sayings were 
the form and translation of the awful utter- 
ance. 

Perhaps while to the people the mountain 
flamed and smoked, and " it thundered," " an 
angel spake " to the hearing inward ear of 
Moses, and the great conception of the Perfect 



210 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

Law was formed within his soul. We are not 
told that the people heard a single \ enunciated 
word. But the Law ivas ; and it was given 
there and then ; it entered, somehow, into the 
spirit of the Prophet and the life of the nation. 
Oh Sinai God came down, and made known 
his will ; and from that hour it was handed 
down to the generations. 

In the quietness beyond the elemental tu- 
mults, the Lord greeted Moses in the spirit, 
and went on to show him His own sublime 
meanings and definite requirements. At the 
foundation, and in the heart of all, were the 
vital principles and decrees of the Ten Say- 
ings. 

The whole being of Moses was possessed 
with the majesty of the Divine word, the 
mighty sense of intimacy and nearness within 
the very shadow of the Highest. This expe- 
rience was of itself both revelation and mes- 
sage. The command of God was in his feeling 
of it. 

" Thou shalt say thus unto the children of 
Israel," it came to him as it were in audible 
speech, " Ye have seen that I have talked 
with you from heaven." 

Therefore^ ye shall not make any gods of 



THE TEN SAYINGS 211 

silver with me, nor unto yourselves any gods 
of gold. 

Ye shall make an altar unto me, but it shall 
be an altar of earth ; the earth that 1 have 
created and formed ; the earth that is alive 
and fruitful with my imparted life. There- 
on ye shall sacrifice — make holy to me — 
the gifts of earth, thy sheep, thine oxen ; and 
wherever I record my name / loill come to tliee^ 
and I will bless thee. 

If thou wilt make me an altar of stone, it 
shall not be of hewn stone ; it shall be of the 
stone that I have made in the earth. Thou 
shalt not lift up thy human tool upon it. 

These, in their meaning, almost in their 
literal word, were the commandments of the 
Lord spoken to Moses, that he might deliver 
again to the people. And thereafter the in- 
struction went on, — the " judgments " of 
righteousness in detailed ordinance, which 
should be the practical keeping of the Law of 
the Ten Sayings. 

In every particular, the exposition and ap- 
plication were shown to the mind of Moses, 
and shaped and framed themselves in his deep 
thought and communing with his God. It 
was a long, intense study and listening ; a 



212 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

taking in and assimilating that of the Eternal 
Wisdom which concerned his people. Apart 
from all interruption and disturbance, alone 
with the Supreme, the time of this first seclu- 
sion, whose duration is not precisely indicated, 
went by in a rapt absorption. The rule and 
method of a divine governing in the earth, in 
the least, daily affairs of common men, was 
organizing itself to the Prophet's high per- 
ception. He took a power in his hand, and 
an authority in his consciousness, from the 
Most High himself and none other, where- 
with to return, full-commissioned, with the 
glory of heavenly things in his face, to the 
congregation. And at the end of the Com- 
mandment came again the Promise ; the 
promise of the Covenant ; the Coming-unto, 
— the Going-with, — the Leading. 

"Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to 
keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into 
the place which I have prepared. Be-aware 
of him, and obey his voice ; provoke him not ; 
for he will not pardon your transgressions ; 
for my name is in him. But if thou shalt 
indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak, 
then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, 
and an adversary unto thine adversaries." 



THE TEN SAYINGS 213 

..." I will not drive them out before tliee 
in one 3'ear, lest the land become desolate, 
and the beast of the field multipl}^ against 
thee. By little and little I will drive them 
out from before thee, until thou be increased, 
and inherit the land." 

Man's salvation shall not be in a hurry, 
before he is ready to be saved. God will be 
tender with his wheat, even in the uprooting 
of the tares. 

The enemies of the Hebrew pilgrims were 
the Amorite and the Hittite, the Perizzite and 
the Canaanite, the Hivite and the Jebusite. 
They were to be cut off, and the people ruled 
by God were to rule in the Promised Coun- 
try. But w^ho can help seeing wdiat those 
wild, idolatrous tribes, holding no covenant 
with the One God and his Righteousness, stand 
for and represent in the great history of the 
earthly and the heavenly resolving its issues 
through all the ages, as enemies to be over- 
come and disjjlaced before the onw^ard march 
of a humanity redeemed and pledged to an 
unswerving allegiance to the Divine, and or- 
dered and led on bv the Jehovah-Anoel? 

Is any less, or different, conquering in the 
Divine Might carried on in the individual hu- 



214 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

man spirit, from before wliom the Lord drives 
out its enemies, tliat He may lead it into its 
larger, happier life in the Loyal Land? Is 
it not the same beautiful Patience that deals 
with us gradually in our weakness, our partial 
knowledges, our besetments with old, unvan- 
quished sins, even ; driving out our evils " by 
little and little," according to the increase of 
our spiritual power to possess ourselves, lest 
in the sudden " desolation of the land " the 
animal nature, like the " beast of the field," 
be left to rise up anew in the yet feeble soul, 
and strengthen itself afresh against us ? 

Was it not in the same tender pity that the 
Lord Christ refused a " sign " that might have 
forced the faith of a " wicked generation," and 
told them of the man out of whom a terrible 
possession of an imclean spirit seemed to have 
gone, until the house of his life was " empty, 
swept, and garnished ; " and then returned, 
with seven worse devils, to " enter in and 
dwell there"? 

And who can doubt that the spirit of Moses, 
consciously or unconsciously, was impressed 
upon and dominated by something far greater 
than the vision of a purpose and hope for the 
establishment and well-being, in merely natu- 



THE TEN SAYINGS 215 

ral things, here, in a small space upon this 
present earth, of a few generations of a few 
chosen tribes, themselves of a mixed good and 
evil nature and action, in the place of a few 
others only a little more blind and rude and 
sensual than they? How could it have been 
but that the soul of the seer was swept by the 
grand conviction, of which this passing story 
of the Israelites was only one little illustration, 
that there is a Lord God of the heaven and 
the earth, that He alone rules in the creation 
and in the affairs of men, and that only the 
soul, or the people, that follows Him and keeps 
his commandment, can come to and possess 
its inheritance in all that He has prepared 
for the believing and obedient ? Not as chil- 
dren of Israel or of Abraham, only, were these 
Hebrews to be saved from their enemies and 
blessed with the great possession and the sat- 
isfied life of the Land of the Beyond, but as 
children and heirs of the Almighty Father. 
To drink milk, and to eat honey, was this all 
the end of the wandering and warfare ? Or 
was it to belong to God, — to join the human 
to the Divine, — to live out his thought, to 
receive his word, to represent Him, each man 
in his own place where the Lord would put 



216 EVENTS OF THE EXOBUS 

him, in the certainty of the absolute blessed- 
ness of that nation — so made a nation — 
whose lawgiver, whose ruler, whose counselor, 
defender, upholder, provider is Jehovah of 
hosts? 



CHAPTER X 

FORTY DAYS IN THE MOUNT 

And God said again to Moses, " Come up 
unto the Lord, thou, and Aaron, and Nadab, 
and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel ; 
and worship ye afar off. And Moses alone 
shall come near the Lord." 

Early in the morning Moses " rose up, and 
builded an altar under the hill, and twelve 
pillars, — according to the twelve tribes of 
Israel." An earth -altar, as the Lord had 
commanded ; a raising up of the very matter 
of the earth itself to the praise and worship of 
the Maker. And here the young men of Israel 
brought their sacrifices, the " peace-offerings," 
from their flocks, to make sign of pact and 
unity with God in holy covenant. And Moses 
"took the book of the covenant," — the tables 
of stone being not yet given, — in which he 
had written " all the words of the Lord," and 
" read in the audience of the people ; and they 
said, All that the Lord hath said we will do, 



218 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

and be obedient." And Moses " took the 
blood," - — the emblem and reality of offered 
life, — " and sprinkled it upon the people, say- 
ing, Behold the blood of the Covenant." Ye 
are made of one blood with God, — of one 
life with Him, — "by all these words " which 
He hath spoken and promised, and to which 
ye have solemnly declared allegiance. 

And so, with Aaron and his sons, and the 
seventy elders, he went up into the mountain 
that was still covered with the cloud where 
God was. 

"And they saw the God of Israel; and 
under his feet as it were a paved work of sap- 
phire stone, and as it were the body of heaven 
in his clearness." 

Through the cloud they saw into the in- 
effable shining, that transformed the craggy 
height into the seeming of a "paved work" of 
blue, transparent gems, clear and wide and 
bright as the transparence of the firmament. 
And they ate and drank — as a solemn Com- 
munion — in that Presence of the Lord, these 
" nobles of the children of Israel ; " and " He 
laid not his hand upon them." 

But unto Moses He called with further sum- 
mons, " Come up to me in the mount, and be " 



FORTY DAYS IN THE MOUNT 219 

(abide) '' there ; and I will give you tables of 
stone, and a law and commandments wliicb I 
have written ; that thou mayest teach them." 

" That I have written." And " upon tables 
of stone." The Word, — the Law, — that I 
have put into all my doing and creating, and 
made everlasting. 

"Written with the finger of God." This 
was what was said later, of the two tablets 
given into the hands of Moses at the end of 
the great Forty Days. Was it a literal script, 
graven on the faces of the scales of rock, by 
the Divine Hand, in a visible lettering ? Or 
did Moses, by the same inspiration that had 
spoken to him all the Will of the Lord, and 
seeing how in the very foundations of the 
earth — the stones of its material building — 
lay the eternal sign and declaration of the 
same AYill and Truth that were now given in 
hol}^ spoken commandment to his people, lift 
reverently from that illumined pavement be- 
neath the feet of God the two smooth tables, 
significantly ready, upon which, in God's name 
and as God's witness, he inscribed the Ten 
Sayings, to take them down for the keeping 
and reminding of Israel, in a form that should 
not perish through all* the generations? Be- 



220 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

fore the Face of God, — with the Divine Voice 
in his heart, and the Finger of God thus point- 
ing him to what he should do, — would not 
Moses feel that Finger as it guided his, and de- 
clare truly that the writing w^as of the Lord ? 

What else is inspiration, miracle, or any 
power, but the thought and act of God, hu- 
manly or in nature made experience or sign ? 

" If I, with the finger of God, cast out 
devils," said Jesus Christ, "no doubt the 
Kingdom of God is come upon you." 

Moses forgot himself, utterly, in his yield- 
ing to the Lord. If a man can do that, God 
will use his heart, his brain, his hand, for his 
own work. The kingdom, — the power, — of 
God has come upon him. And the man, claim- 
ing nothing for himself, will but simply say 
truth, " It is the Lord." 

Is there any difficulty in receiving this? 
And is the story any less sublime ? 

The whole trouble with crediting the Bible 
narrative is that men do not recognize, in 
themselves and in all that truly and purely 
comes to them, this word and act of God. 
They do not stand in the attitude of Moses : 
hence what Moses saw and knew, and declared 
simply in the strong, natural language of type 



FORTY DAYS IN THE MOUNT 221 

and feeling, they know not how to receive. 
They make a thing extraneous, and then quar- 
rel with the improbabilit}^ of the extraneous 
circumstance. This — not the clear, spiritual 
interpretation — is the begging of the ques- 
tion. 

" And Moses went up into the Mount of 
God." " And a cloud covered the mount. 
And the glory of the Lord abode upon Mount 
Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days ; " the 
measure of time that stands for measurement 
of the periods of creation, by that Word which 
was from the beginning with God. " And the 
seventh day," — the day of fulfillment and rest 
that the Lord ordained to keep with his peo- 
ple, — " he called unto Moses out of the midst 
of the cloud. And the sight of the glory of 
the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of 
the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel. 
And Moses went into the midst" — into the 
heart — "of the cloud, and gat him up into 
the mount," " into the glory : and Moses was 
in the mount forty days and forty nights." 



CHAPTER XI 

THE TABERNACLE 

Within the cloud, the Tabernacle. 

Behind the thick darkness, the Eternal 
Light. 

Beyond the veil, the manifest Presence of 
the Most Holy. 

Moses entered into that within the veil ; 
Aaron, his sons, and the elders waited and 
worshiped without. There is a worship that 
yet must wait below ; that does not attain to 
the intimate communion. Moses found out 
what it is to " be " with God. He learned 
the experience of that which David sang long 
after : — 

" He shall hide me in his pavilion : in the 
secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me : he 
shall set me up upon a rock." 

He learned that which Job remembered of 
the " former days " when he dwelt in the 
light, and God's " visitation preserved his 
spirit." 



THE TABERNACLE 223 

" O that I were as in mouths past, as in the 
days when God preserved me : when his can- 
dle shined upon my head, and by his light I 
walked through darkness : as I was in the days 
of my youth, when the secret of God was 
upon my tabernacle.'* 

Rapt into this joy, this nearness, the splen- 
dor of its inmost truth — the truth that such 
a nearness could be — took possession of the 
spirit of the Hebrew leader. It was not for 
him alone to learn and realize. It was to be 
a great revelation. It concerned all men. It 
concerned first this people of Israel, through 
whom God would make known that it is in 
Him and with Him his children live ; that He 
makes tent and dwelling-place with the gener- 
ations, and in the secret experience of every 
living man. It was the doctrine of the Abid- 
ing Word. 

How should Moses interpret this great 
thing to the people ; this hidden fellowship 
with the Almighty which neither Aaron nor 
all the priests and elders could understand? 
With what sign should he show them this be- 
yond, — this within, — this calm and safety 
behind the mystery and the wonders and the 
terrors, — shut off as 'they were by the cloud 



224 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

and thick darkness of their ignorance and 
sin? 

Filled with the glory and the demand, — 
forgetting time, forgetting himself, and the 
waiting multitude, — he lapsed into his long 
sojourn upon Sinai, watching and listening, 
with all his being, for what God would show 
and say. 

And the Lord did show and tell him all. 
The beautiful pattern of a visible teaching 
began unfolding itself before him, traced to 
his thought as by an illumining finger. A 
plan was evolved to his comprehension ; a rep- 
resentation was given him that should sig- 
nify to all the people this lovely mystery, this 
abiding of God in their midst, this possible 
approach of his souls to himself. 

The vision of a typifying Tabernacle arose 
and grew before his inward seeing. 

Of the purest things of light and precious- 
ness it should be made. 

Of the offerings " given willingly with the 
heart " it should be fashioned. 

Every man should bring of his own, of his 
best. Gold, and silver, and brass ; for purity, 
for value, for enduringness. Fine linen, and 
beautiful color ; curtains of light, like the cur- 



THE TABERNACLE 225 

tains of tlie firmament, for a tent through 
which the Presence should glow; in hues of 
the wonderful refractions into which the splen- 
dor of heaven divides itself through the weav- 
ing and texture of the earthly. 

Oil for the lamps of the Lord ; spices and 
incense for fragrance, which is the sweet feed- 
ing of true perceptions, and the upward waft- 
ing of gladness and thanksgiving. 

Precious stones and crystals, each filled with 
a separate radiance, alive with its own, one 
light from the All-Glory. 

Wood of the Arabian acacia, perfect of 
growth, firm and strong ; precious with gum 
distilled and stored in its veins, drawn by its 
clean life from the elements of the rank earth. 

All the signs and tokens of the heavenly in 
the material ; all shining, and strength, and 
sweetness, and righteous relations of form and 
measure and number ; all sureness, and pure- 
ness, and permanence : these to be chosen and 
wrought out to a sacred beauty, a divine dis- 
closure. No tool of heathenism to be lifted 
up upon the work ; no spirit of heathenism to 
be in the thought or use of it, but a hallowing 
of the Name of the Most High, as He him- 
self has written it in things. Nothing of idol- 



226 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

atry, — that is a stopping short at the sign, — 
but worship^ reaching through the sign by the 
worth-ship that is set in it, and finding the 
Most Holy. 

It should be a building for and to the Lord ; 
an annunciation and a witness that God him- 
self is at the heart of things, and will there 
be recognized. That He inhabits his creation ; 
that from the burning bush to the soul of man, 
all is the Temple of the Holy Ghost ; that 
" by the things that are made and visible are 
clearly shown the things that are invisible^ 
even the Eternal Power and Godhead." That 
so we ourselves dwell in spirit with spirit, and 
not alone as material creatures in a world of 
matter. 

This knowledge is Re-ligion ; the binding 
again together of the Spirit and the flesh, the 
temporal and the eternal. It is the Resurrec- 
tion of the Body, and the Life Everlasting. 

This conception was the central experience 
of the life of Moses ; his most interior appre- 
hension and belief. It may have been so inte- 
rior that he did not at the first comprehend it 
all himself ; that does not say that it was not 
in him, to grow to comprehension more and 
more. We feel even before we know. It was 



THE TABERNACLE 227 

his inspiration ; the reality of his commission. 
It was what the Tabernacle and the Ark of 
the Covenant meant to him, and should mean 
to the Hebrew nation and to the world. The 
things, the words, were to be a per23etual en- 
shrinement and expression of the one ineffable 
Mystery ; the sublimely simple, vital Fact of 
all being and existence. 

Unless this had been in the deep heart of 
Moses, there could have been no Jewish law, 
no ceremonial ; any more than without the 
moving of the Spirit of God there could have 
been in the beginning a creation. 

The Tabernacle was type of the Incarna- 
tion. 

" If the ministration of death," — of the per- 
ishing, — "graven in stones," — in the mere 
things of the earth, — " was glorious, how shall 
not the ministration of the Spirit be rather 
glorious ? " 

" The Law was our schoolmaster, to bring 
us to Christ." And the Christ is Immanuel : 
God loith every one of us. 

The doctrine of the Tabernacle is the secret 
of the Father with his humanity. It was 
shadowed forth by Moses : it was fulfilled in 
Jesus, born in Bethlehem, Christ the Lord. 



228 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

Herein is the great Unity of the Old and 
the New ; it could never be destroyed, but 
must be forever made more manifest. 

The Tabernacle was, then, the sign of the 
Indwelling. God was in the midst of his peo- 
ple ; in the midst of the heart-life of every one 
of his children. 

The Ceremonial was for representation of 
approach to this Holy Presence ; of direct in- 
tercourse with the Divine. It was the way 
and form of worship. 

To the last beautiful particular of the things 
of the Sanctuary, to the perfect illustration in 
substance, shape, color, workmanship, fitting, 
and use, of every sign with which the people, 
on their part, were to come before their God, 
drawing near to him, and making language 
of the " gifts and creatures," which He had 
" sanctified with his Word and Holy Spirit," 
that they should be language, and that lan- 
guage should be born of them ; in all these 
details, the vision and the plan plainly speci- 
fied themselves to the open intuition of God's 
servant. 

The holy garments for the priests ; every 
vestment and ornament, — the ephod, the 



THE TABERNACLE 229 

breastplate, the robe, the girdle, the mitre ; 
the onyx stones graven with the twelve names 
of Israel, six on one side and six on the other, 
to be borne on the shoulders of Aaron before 
the Lord ; the wreathen chains, with rings 
and ouches, by which the jeweled breastplate 
— a separate signet-stone for everj^ tribe, with 
again the graven names — should hang from 
the onyx fastenings upon the bosom of the 
priest, that he should " bear the names of the 
children of Israel in the breastplate of judg- 
ment upon his heart, when he goeth into the 
holy place, for a memorial before the Lord 
continually ; '' the mystical Urim and Thum- 
mim, — glory and holiness set as by precious 
gems in the breastplate, that they should " be 
upon Aaron's heart when he goeth in before 
the Lord," and that of the heavenly light and 
perfection should come counsel and judgment 
when he asked them of God for the people in 
any matter ; the alternate bells of gold and 
pomegranates bordering the robe, sounding 
sweet chimes of call and permission to go in 
and out before the Most Holy, and betokening 
the fruit-bearing of a full and sweet obedience 
that must follow every call and privilege ; the 
band of gold for the forefront of the mitre 



230 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

upon Aaron's forehead, inscribed with the 
declaration of the meaning of all meanings, 
the conclusion of all ordinance, — '^Holiness 
to the Lord ;''^ the sweet-compounded incense 
to be burned upon the altar, sending up as to 
the throne of God the odors " which are the 
prayers of saints," — a perfume never to be 
used for their own pleasure, but always offered 
for the pleasure of the Lord, and always 
accompanied by the prayers of the congrega- 
tion at the time of morning and evening in- 
cense ; — all this garb and ritual took grand 
array and presentment before the inspired 
imagination of Moses, and became already in 
his thought a glorious, completed system of 
visible annunciation that should be continually 
made to the generations of Israel in their 
solemnly commanded observance. 

Heart and brain were glowing; fervid, as 
from a quickening flame ; intense with eager- 
ness to go down, and proclaim, and institute 
the sacred work ; to possess the whole congre- 
gation with the same divine ardor and energy ; 
to satisfy the people, and show them the great 
light they had been groping for ; to begin the 
Revelation that was to make known and realize 
at last the whole thought and purpose of God 
with men. 



THE TABERNACLE 231 

He longed to declare to Bezaleel the son 
of Uri, and to Alioliab the son of Ahisamach, 
the gifts and calling of Jehovah to them es- 
pecially, — that. He had "filled them" with 
his own Spirit, " in wisdom, and in under- 
standing, and in knowledge, and in all manner 
of workmanship," and that " into the hearts 
of all that are wisehearted " He had " put 
wisdom, that they may make all that I have 
commanded." 

Filled and thrilled was the soul of Moses 
with all this ; with the deep and holy under- 
standing that in the things of creation God 
had hidden his own secret word of wisdom 
and beauty, and in the hearts of men the dis- 
cernment that should meet and recognize, use 
and sanctify all things in the Spirit. He took 
the two tables of stone, '* written with the fin- 
ger of God," and knew that God for that time 
and for present commandment had " made an 
end of communing with him ; " and he listened 
only for the word of the Lord that he should 
go down. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE GOLDEN CALF 

The word came. Was it what we in our 
ignorance call presentiinent^ or in our super- 
stition second sight, when the Spirit tells us 
suddenly something in the spirit of which our 
senses can as yet know nothing ? 

" Get thee down," the command was spoken ; 
inwardly, we must believe, as all the other 
instruction and intercourse had been given ; 
for surely it is as Spirit with spirit that the 
Lord must speak, — " Get thee down ; for thy 
people have corrupted themselves." They 
have turned aside from me, and made an idol, 
and " have worshiped and sacrificed there- 
unto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, 
which have brought thee up out of the land 
of Egypt." 

It was a clear-seeing. It showed itseK all 
at once, over against his own sublime joy, — 
the thing he had to go back to ; the blind- 
ness and " stifE-neckedness " he would have to 



THE GOLDEN CALF 233 

encounter, and upon which he would have to 
pour his precious revelation of the truth. 

" They will not see ; they will not receive ; 
they will not even have waited for me these 
forty days and forty nights," he thought, as 
indeed they had not ; even Aaron and the 
elders had not " tarried " where they were 
bidden, but had gone down at the summons 
of the impatient multitude, to yield to its re- 
bellious importunity ; only his own minister, 
Joshua, had remained steadfastly near, in the 
mountain solitude. 

The refractory people had already been on 
the verge of mutiny, apostasy, idolatry; this 
came back to the mind of Moses with a quench- 
ing of his exulting zeal ; in the high tension of 
his spiritual faculties, his very vision projected 
itself with his thought, and he beheld the con- 
gregation adoring the molten image which their 
hands had made. " The Lord said unto him," 
the text tells us, and tells us true. In the 
spirit, with the Lord, he looked and felt with 
the Lord's own sight and knowledge ; it was 
" thought-transference " from the all-knowing 
mind of God. 

So that, turning from the instant flash of 
keen impression, he put himself at one with 



234 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

the Lord himself, and shared his anger, feel- 
ing with a mighty convulsion of his whole 
being some small sense of that which must be 
in the indignation of a Perfect Righteousness. 

" Let me alone, that I may consume them," 
he heard God say. " And I will make of thee 
a great nation." Not with impulse of a self- 
ish ambition, a hope in his own opportunity 
through the misdoing of others, did this suggest 
itself ; but rather, we must think, knowing all 
the self-abnegation of Moses, in a steadfast, 
determined loyalty to the grand light and com- 
mandment he only had received, even if he only 
should believe in and live for it ; in a faith 
that the truth should stand, and yet grow in 
the earth, though all Israel should desert and 
repudiate it ; that there should yet be a nation 
whose God should be the Lord ; that God was 
" able of these stones to raise up children unto 
Abraham." All alone, if that must be, he 
would hold fast; all alone he would cherish 
the revelation ; God himself would provide : 
He woidd do the rest. 

And then he shared, as he had shared the 
anger, the swift Divine Compassion ; one with 
the wrath, as the shining light is one with the 
threatening peal ; only separate to human ear 



THE GOLDEN CALF 235 

and eye that can never receive the instant 
whole, or know how even the consuming flash 
is out of the quick heart of Love, and is in- 
tense for life, and not destruction. 

The Spirit of God pleaded in Moses back 
to God himself, ready to be pleaded with : 
" Remember thy promise and thy covenant, 
Lord," he prayed ; " the seed of Abraham, 
Isaac, and Israel, that thou swarest should be 
as the stars of heaven, and the land that thou 
saidst they should inherit forever. Turn from 
thy wrath, and forgive even this evil to thy 
people." 

And the Lord — who commands the for- 
giveness of seventy times seven offenses — 
" repented of the evil which he thought to do 
unto his people." 

Did Moses rebuke Jehovah ? Did he teach 
Him his own lovingkindness and tender mercy ? 
No : but he entered into the very counsels of 
the Most High ; into justice and judgment, 
long-suffering and redemption ; finding them 
each in Him, and finding them all as one. 

The human wrath, that forgets forgiveness 
for the moment, stirred Moses passionately 
when he came down with Joshua into the 



236 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

camp, and saw the image, and the dancing, 
the wild orgie of a heathen demonolatry, and 
Aaron his brother, the high priest of the Liv- 
ing God, in the midst of it all, tolerating, coun- 
tenancing, with such futile half -control and di- 
rection as he might. " The people were set 
on mischief," he told the angry prophet, who 
had dashed down the two tables of the Law, 
significantly broken at a crash, — for Avhat was 
a holy and perfect law to such a people as 
this, outraging it beforehand? And to the 
stern demand of his brother and commander 
that he should declare what had brought it 
about that he had permitted this great sin, 
Aaron weakly answered : " Thou knowest 
them; they would have gods. I bade them 
bring their gold, and I cast it into the fire, 
and there came out — this calf ! " 

After the fires of Sinai, and the visible 
glory of God, — this ! Could Aaron more 
keenly, more absurdly, have satirized himself ? 

Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, 
and sent forth out of his great, indignant soul 
a strong voice in few, short words : — 

" Who is on the Lord's side ? Let him come 
to me ! " 

And all the sons of Levi came. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE CLIFT OF THE ROCK 

Then followed the terrible slaughter of 
kinsman by kinsman, throughout the camp of 
the Israelites, at the hands of the sons of Levi, 
by the command of Moses, until there had 
"fallen of the people that day about three 
thousand men." 

An awful expurgation of idolatry at which 
we shudder when we read, and question 
whether this were human wrath and cruelty or 
the ordaining judgment of God. And if it 
were of God, can the God of the Old Testi- 
mony and of the New be one ? How can we 
reconcile it ? In what light can we receive it ? 

I think it must be in the light in which it 
came to Moses. We are studying what he 
believed. God is One, but He is Infinite. 
Men are small, many, separate, and diverse. 
Men live in successions, of personal growth 
and of the world's history. One man — one 
time — does not behold, nor live, the whole. 



238 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

eternal Truth. And yet we need have no 
trouble in discerning how each true soul has 
had a grasp of something which is of the eter- 
nal, the perfect. 

Moses had hold of God; the God whose 
manifest work in man is of the holy against 
the unholy : not against the man, but against 
the evil that would destroy man. The bad, 
the false, must be done away. He who would 
have the wicked eye, the guilty hand, plucked 
out, cut off, that the living soul might be saved, 
spoke the same word in the wilderness of 
Arabia, by the order and act of his servant 
Moses, that He spoke by his Christ on the 
mountain in Galilee, in his sermon of the true 
blessedness and the absolute righteousness ; 
and again in the selfsame unflinching words 
by the Lake of Gennesaret, just after his 
heavenly Transfiguration and his tender heal- 
ing of the lunatic boy, when his disciples 
'• disputed by the way " as they went down, 
about a selfish greatness. Greatness, he told 
them, is service and sacrifice. Evil and of- 
fense must be purged out. It is he who will 
endure, and relinquish, and submit to the dis- 
cipline of God, who shall come out into the 
life everlasting. '* Every one shall be salted 
with fire," he told them. 



THE CLIFT OF THE ROCK 239 

" Who is on the Lord's side ? " is the ques- 
tion put to all souls in great test hours. On 
the Lord's side, even against yourselves, when 
yourselves need cleansing. 

Bodily life has been of little account 
throughout history, either sacred or profane. 
Something grander, more real, has always 
swept it aside. Even savagery and torture 
have done their work, however brutally, in 
some intended conquering of the brutal ; of 
cowardice, sloth, of beastly, low content : these 
have been subjugated to ideals of courage, 
prow^ess, fortitude, honor, as honor might be 
held. 

Moses lived in his own time, and God 
worked in it with him, as He works in ours 
with us. Who shall say that the slaughter 
of the idolatrous Hebrews, corrupters of their 
brethren, enslavers of them to old, base super- 
stitions and impurities, was work of pitiless, 
malignant cruelty, and our own war of eman- 
cipation was a struggle, a noble sacrifice, for 
the Right against the Wrong ? Judge history 
and Providence alike and fairly all the way 
down, you who would cast aside the whole 
record and motive of a grand new establish- 
ment of Faith in the world, in place of igno- 



240 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

rant sensualities, because of pain and conflict 
and bloodshed, through which in the crude 
nature and handling of the human, — the very 
human that it was given to lift up above pas- 
sions and cruelties of hate and vengeance, — 
it had to come. 

Life marches on by paths of death. We 
submit to it in the progress of nations, in the 
initiatives of science, in all that makes a grand, 
final, universal gain, or aims at such, for the 
enlarging interests of humanity. We must 
read the Exodus as we read the passing chap- 
ters of the swiftly unrolling chronicles of our 
own century. Men must die ; but man must 
live. And we may leave the individual — 
even our own personal, thinking, doubting, 
fearing, hoping, trusting individuality — to 
Him who cares for the sparrow that falls, 
and for every hair upon every head, however 
smitten. Who " spared not his own Son, but 
freely gave Him up for us all." For every 
man is still a part, and shall so survive, of the 
very, whole Humanity for which man suffers. 
What is to be saved, to be glorified, to be 
lifted up and made complete in God, but this 
very aggregate of individualities ? If the drop 
were lost, where were the ocean ? 



THE CLIFT OF THE ROCK 241 

It surely was not mere wrathful vengeance, 
mere passion of indignation sating itself with 
destruction, that had moved Moses to this 
terrible execution. " Consecrate yourselves 
this day to the Lord," he had told the Levites, 
called to be the avengers, " that this day He 
may bestow upon you a blessing." 

He made the people do, in their tribes and 
by multitudes, what every soul must do in for- 
swearing sense and sin. The dearest, most in- 
timate things must be cast off, cut down, the 
moment they are known to be sins, idolatries. 
And in the day that this is done, the Lord 
will fill the life, so purged and consecrated, 
with his blessing. 

Moreover, the prophet went back once more 
into the mountain, seeking out his God, with 
a great compassion and repentance for his ])qo- 
pie urging upon his heart. Already the holy 
myster}' of atonement was moving between 
man and God. " I will go up unto the Lord : 
perad venture I shall make an atonement for 
your sin," was the word with which Moses left 
the living with their dead upon the morrow. 

And before the Lord he came with broken, 
sobbing words : " Oh, this people have sinned 
a great sin, and have made them gods of 



242 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

gold. Yet, noio, if thou wilt forgive their 

sin " No words fill up the pause; the 

ordinary, concise, explicit scripture suddenly 
fails ; the voice stops ; the break was filled 
by a mute surging of the human pain toward 
the Infinite Pity ; by a down-flow of that Pity 
into the very heart-life of the man who prayed. 
It was as if " He who spared not his own 
Son " because " He so loved the world " — He 
who puts our prayers into our hearts because 
the answer is already in his own — made 
Moses say, with low, tender, utterly seK-im- 
molating entreaty, "And if not, blot me, I 
pray thee, out of thy book, which thou hast 
written." 

It was the divineness of an intercession 
which can only be that of the Spirit with It- 
self in the " breathings that cannot be ut- 
tered." 

Was there not forgiveness, patience with 
passing ignorance, a promise of redemption, 
even in the words that came to Moses in the 
Lord's reply? Was there not in them the 
mercy that sees how men sin against their own 
half -understandings, — how as " against the 
son of man they may blaspheme," — nor yet 



THE CLIFT OF THE ROCK 243 

mean, nor know, any sin or blasphemy against 
the Supreme and Holy Spirit? Was there 
not the pleading of the Cross, — the " for- 
give them, for they know not what they do," 
— uttered as from God's heart to the leader 
of his people, in the sentence we may seem 
to hear gently, not vindictively pronounced, 
" Whosoever hath sinned against me^ him will 
I blot out of my book " ? 

Has man ever, in any willful daring, reached 
to the very Me of the Almighty, so — delib- 
erately and consciously — to sin? Is there 
not a depth in the Infinite Heart that cannot 
be sinned against by any delusions or way- 
wardnesses of ordinary tempted earthliness ? 
Does not God so reserve in himself the right 
to pardon ? Is not this the " Lamb in the 
midst of the Throne," — the Tenderness in the 
bosom of Almightiness, — which bears forever, 
and yearns over forever, the losses and wan- 
derings of his children while they keep away 
from Him ? 

" Therefore^^' now go, the command pro- 
ceeded ; " lead the people unto the place of 
which I have sjDoken unto thee : behold, mine 
Angel shall go before thee." 

" I will not leave you comfortless ; I will 



244 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

come to you." So said the Son, also, when he 
had been rejected, and men waited to crucify 
him, and thrust him out of his own world, — 
the world that in him " God so loved." 

" Lead my people to the place " where I am 
waiting for them. Mine Angel shall show you 
all the way. " Nevertheless^ in the day lohen 
I visits I will visit their sin upon them." 

That which their sin has been, — which they 
know not now, — then shall they feel and 
know ; to feel and know it is salvation. It 
is even so that I will visit, and I will save." 

" And the Lord plagued the people, because 
they made the calf, which Aaron made." 

This, then, here and always, is the word of 
the Lord : I will smite, I will wound, I will 
chastise, for sin. — The because is in the New 
Testament : " Fpr whom the Lord loveth, he 
chasteneth ; and scourgeth every son whom 
he receiveth." " As many as I love, I re- 
buke and chasten ; be zealous therefore, and 
repent." 

"I will send an angel before thee; ... I 
will not go up in the midst of thee." 

There was the difference. Their sin had 
not sent the Lord away from their life and its 



THE CLIFT OF THE ROCK 245 

guidance ; they were still his people, his chil- 
dren ; still He would go before them by his 
Angel ; but in the heart of them, in their 
midst, his life with their life, to their know- 
ledge and joy. He would not abide. " Lest I 
consume thee," He told Moses. There was 
mercy in the very penalty. The people who 
had made idols to themselves could not bear 
God in their midst. They had of their own 
will and deed put off the promise. The Tab- 
ernacle and its beauty were not yet for them. 
Every man had to stand in his own tent door 
when Moses went out into the tabernacle, 
which he had '' pitched without the camp." 

The ineffable Presence met him there ; the 
people saw the sign of it as a cloud, as they 
had seen it upon the mountain; it "stood as 
a pillar at the door ; " but Moses had entered 
in, and the Lord talked with him, " face to 
face, as a man speaketh unto his friend." 

Face to face ; directly ; without blind or hin- 
drance, even of sign, but thought to thought, 
word to word, understanding to understand- 
ing-. We see afterward how this must be 
meant. It was not vision, to mortal eye, of a 
Divine Countenance in awful glory ; God told 
him, presently, that this could not be. " Thou 



246 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

canst not see my face ; there shall no man see 
me, and live." But to the pleading of Moses, 
half bewildered between his own strong, real- 
izing faith and the sentence of blindness upon 
his people, — the refusal to them of that which 
they had refused ; to his almost expostulating 
prayer, " See, thou sayest unto me. Bring up 
this people ; and thou hast not let me know 
whom thou wilt send with me. Yet thou hast 
said, I know thee by name, and thou also hast 
found grace in my sight. If I have found 
grace in thy sight, show me now thy way," — 
to this beseeching the Lord answered, " My 
Presence shall go with thee, and I will give 
thee rest." 

And Moses said again unto the Lord, " If 
thy Presence go not, carry us not up hence. 
For wherein shall it be known here that I and 
thy people have found grace in thy sight ? Is 
it not in that thou goest with us ? " 

Moses desired with a great longing the con- 
tinued manifestation ; that the glory should 
not be taken away from the tabernacle, but 
that God should continue openly " in the 
midst " with his people. 

"I will do this thing also that thou hast 
spoken," the Lord assured him. But He 



THE CLIFT OF THE ROCK 247 

would do it in his own way. He would make 
it evident before the nations that Israel was 
his own nation, " separated," as Moses had 
said, by their covenant with Him "from all 
the people that were upon the face of the 
earth." 

" Thou hast found grace in my sight, there- 
fore I will do this that thou hast spoken." 

Still Moses wrestled and urged. He was 
like Jacob, in the wrestling by which he be- 
came Israel, when he declared, " I will not let 
thee go, except thou bless me." Still he said, 
" I beseech thee, show me thy glory." 

And He said, " I will make all my goodness 
pass before thee." " I will be gracious, and 
show merc}^" He was giving Moses the true 
life-sign ; something beyond any visible won- 
der ; Something that should be to him unfail- 
ing testimony of daily abiding, and no tran- 
sient splendor ; He was taking him into yet 
diviner, simpler mysteries than any he had 
fully known. 

Then it was that He said, " Thou canst not 
see my face ; " eartldy sight may not have 
that vision, and endure. "But I will take 
thee with me, and hide thee in a place by me ; 
thou shalt stand fast upon a rock." Was not 



248 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

this abiding sense of word and presence the 
Kock upon which the Christ would build his 
church ? 

" And it shall come to pass, while my glory 
passeth by, that I will put thee in a clif t of 
the rock, and will cover thee with my hand as 
I pass by ; and I will take away mine hand, 
and thou shalt see my back parts ; but my 
face shall not be seen." 

The things I shall have done will show me 
to thee ; in a safe rest under my hand I will 
cover thee ; in a place made for thee in the 
Everlasting Might I will hold thee, and my 
glory shall pass by ; thou shalt wait, and 
trust ; and when my hand is lifted, thou shalt 
know that it has been I, and by the afterward 
thou shalt discern me, and shalt learn that I 
have been, and will be always, near. 

Is not this what God says in the making of 
his history with men ? 

Whatever happens, — in the imperfect con- 
ditions and the delusions, transgressions, and 
passionate throes and outbursts of a nature 
evolving, individually and in the race, from 
lowest beginnings of sense and impulse to 
highest knowledges and affections, — thou, 
Believing Soul ! art in the clift of the Eter- 



THE CLIFT OF THE ROCK 249 

nal Rock, covered, for thine own safety, — 
hidden from that which is too great for thee, 

— until the hour of my revelation shall have 
come ; until the things that I do, which thou 
knowest not now, thou shalt know in the here- 
after. Be still, now, and know only that I am 
God! 

How long it may have been after this that 
Moses found himself called of the Lord to go 
up again into the mountain, bringing the two 
new-hewn tables of stone to receive a second 
time the commandments for the people, — 
bidden to listen also to a repeated teaching 
concerning the Covenant and the Tabernacle, 
and take a fresh permission and authority for 
instituting the beautiful system of sign that 
had been profaned beforehand and put in 
abeyance by the idolatrous sin of the congre- 
gation, — we do not know; but we can un- 
derstand what the putting off, and the pause, 
must have meant. 

They who could make and worshijD a golden 
calf — a sign of their own, and a thing only 

— were not fit and ready to receive and use 
the holy signs which God would set for them to 
learn himself by. They would have stopped 



250 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

again at the material ; we know they did so 
stop, after all, in their ceremonies and tradi- 
tions, in the external oblation, in the blood of 
animal sacrifice that reached not to the offer- 
ing of human hearts, in the mint, anise, and 
cummin of small, perfunctory service. What 
use to build at once the lovely tabernacle that 
would be to them only another work of their 
own hands, with its blue and its scarlet, and 
fine-twined linen, and gold and brass ? What 
better would it be to worship these than the 
image of molten metal that had " come out 
of the fire " when Aaron cast their foolish 
trinkets into it? Where would be the Real 
Presence of the Lord to them ? 

The joy of Moses in its revelation and in the 
tokens that should show it forth, was quenched 
against the deadness and hardness of a gross, 
ignorant fetichism. The Truth must wait. 
The Holy cannot be given to the unclean. 

There was a blank of common life, a space 
of excommunication, between message and 
message, glory and glory, uttered and opened 
for their souls by the Spirit of the Lord. 

But at last, and again. His time came. 

" Be ready, and come up in the morning. 
Present thyself to me in the top of the mount," 



THE CLIFT OF THE ROCK 251 

God said to the heart-discouraged, soul-believ- 
ing Prophet. " No man shall come up with 
thee, nor be seen in the whole mount. Let 
not even the flocks and herds feed before it." 

Into that awful solitude, that beautiful 
Mystery, Moses climbed again. Pie left his 
very own mortal, as it were, behind him, and 
went up in the pure spirit, forgetting earth, 
to Jehovah. Telling the story over to his peo- 
ple afterward, he says, and repeats at further 
points of the narration, " / fell down hefore 
the Lord'' 

Self-relinquishment. That is the true wor- 
ship, — the only attitude of recipiency. It is 
at once the offering and the obtaining. Reli- 
gion is simply the laying of life — each thing 
and thought of life as it comes — down before 
the Lord. Sorrow, anguish, fear, anxiety ; 
repentance, renunciation of evil, longing for 
cleansing and absolution ; hope, motive, pur- 
pose, pleasure, success ; little common an- 
noyances or satisfactions, — everything, — 
brought to Him, laid open before Him, to help 
or heal, to use, to sanctify with the Divine 
sympathy and permission, — his gladness to 
be acknowledged in our gladness, his pity in 
our pain, his commandment in our wish and 



252 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

intent, — this is just all of it. This is Moses 
in the mountain ; this it is to " fall down be- 
fore the Lord." 

" O come," the beautiful Psalm sings to us, 
" let us worship and fall down ; let us kneel 
before the Lord our Maker. For He is the 
Lord our God ; and we are the people of his 
pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O wor- 
ship the Lord in the beauty of holiness," whole- 
ness ; " let the tohole eavth^' our whole life in 
the earthly, " stand in awe of Him. For He 
Cometh, for He cometh, to judge the earth ; " 
to set the earthly right in his sight, and in 
harmony with the heavenly ; " and with right- 
eousness to judge the world, and the people 
with his truth." 

Certainly Moses upon Sinai, and King Da- 
vid in Jerusalem, believed the same thing, re- 
joiced in the same command and keeping. 

The Lord gave his words into the heart of 
Moses, whose heart lay open before Him. 

" Write thou these words," He said. Make 
record of them. " For after the tenor of these 
words I have made covenant with thee, and 
with Israel." 

And again the vision and the hearing lasted 



THE CLIFT OF THE ROCK 253 

forty days and forty nights. The whole being 
of Moses was again filled and illnniinated, 
while he " neither ate bread nor drank wine," 
bnt hearkened to the Lord, by whose word, 
and not by bread alone, men live ; and " wrote 
upon the tables the words of the covenant, 
the ten commandments." 

At last, with the complete grand thought 
rebuilded in him, ready to be detailed in a 
careful order of law and observance to the 
people, " in all things after the pattern showed 
in the mount," he descended once more with 
the stone tables in his hands, with the shining 
in his face, and the heavenly intelligence ray- 
ing from his temples, into the camp upon the 
plain, at the far-stretching foot of the solitary 
steeps of Sinai. 

Aaron and the people were afraid, for the 
shining of his face, for the glory of God was 
in it ; he had to veil himself to sjDeak with 
them ; and afterward, whensoever he went in 
to speak unto the Lord, he went " face to face " 
with the tender, enfolding, penetrating radi- 
ance ; but when he came out with the com- 
mands for Israel, he " put the veil upon his 
face again." 

So Christ, coming down from the glory that 



254 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

lie had with the Father before the world was, 
did veil himself with mortal flesh, that he 
might lead all flesh by the " new and living 
way, into the holiest." 

The Clift in the Rock is the Human Heart 
of Christ. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE SEDITION OF AAEON AND MIEIAM 

In the Book of Numbers account is given 
of a seditious questioning which Miriam and 
Aaron brought up between themselves in re- 
gard to Moses their brother, with whom they 
were associated in the deliverance of the He- 
brew people, and in prophetic gifts of inspira- 
tion from the Lord. They took exception all 
at once, ostensibly, because Moses " had mar- 
ried an Ethiopian woman." They judged him 
in his ordinary, human relation ; perhaps in 
some human weakness, or folly, as they deemed 
it ; and they said, " Is Moses indeed, — this 
man Moses who is not in all things above 
other men, or even wise in his own life-order- 
ing, — chief over us all in the very counsels 
and authority of God ? Hath the Lord spoken 
only by him ? Hath He not also spoken by 
us? And the Lord heard it^ 

It was a private whisper, doubtless ; the 
mere Initial breathing of discontent. Moses, 



256 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

apparently, suspected nothing of it. But it 
was a disloyalty that spoke loud in the ears of 
the Lord ; He heard it plain in their hearts 
before it was even a word on their tongues. 
And He himself answered it. 

" Now Moses " — the record says, — " was 
very meek, above all the men upon the face of 
the earth." 

In the commonly understood meaning of the 
word, Moses was not " meek." He was quick 
to resent injustice and disobedience : witness 
his smiting of the Egyptian taskmaster ; wit- 
ness his anger and his dashing down of the 
tables of the violated Law at his coming down 
from Sinai among the idolaters. Neither had 
he any shy self-distrust. He had no hesitancy 
in putting himself forward when his place was 
forward ; he had no doubt of his call to the 
forward place. But he was grandly self-for- 
getful ; too self -effaced to be falsely modest, 
or afraid. He was not abashed before the 
Lord upon Mount Sinai ; he was not cowed 
by the reproaches or rebellions of the hosts 
whom he had to control. He simply moved 
so in the strength of the Lord, so spoke in the 
utterance of his commandment, that his own 
personality was lost in the higher dignity of 



SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 257 

his office. It disappeared in a Divine glory. 
He wist not that his face shone. 

" Thus saith the Lord, with whom I have 
talked face to face for you ; " that was his 
commission and credential. Aaron and Mir- 
iam, standing a little farther down, saw their 
brother as they saw themselves, in a separate, 
human individuality ; a man visited of God, 
and so great among his fellows. They could 
not conceive of him, nor have conceived of 
themselves, as absorbed, discharged of self, by 
the possession of the Supreme Spirit. Neither 
on the Mountain of the Law, nor on the 
Mountain of Transfiguration, could they have 
stood beside him ; because they could not so 
lose and abnegate themselves as to perceive 
pure Deity, or be transfigured into the Lord's 
likeness at His appearing. They could not, 
as to their selfhood, be "put into a clift of 
the rock, and covered with God's hand as He 
passed by." 

But as the voice of their hearts had come 
to the ear of the Lord, so his voice in answer 
made itself heard in their ears and under- 
standings. Truly they were prophets also, 
and to them the word of the Lord should 
be spoken ; of conviction to their reason, of 



258 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

rebuke to the jealous, self-seeking in their 
souls. 

" In the pillar of the cloud " — " in the door 
of the tabernacle " — came the Presence, and 
the summons sounded forth : — 

" Come out, ye three ; hear now my words. 
If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord 
will make myseK known unto him in a vision, 
and will speak unto him in a dream. My ser- 
vant Moses is not so. With him will I speak 
mouth to mouth, and not in dark speeches ; 
and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold ; 
wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak 
against my servant Moses ? " 

That is all the written story of it ; the word 
and the visitation came. Somehow^ they knew 
— " suddenly " — the mind of the Almighty ; 
and their own thought shrank away and per- 
ished before the reproof of his anger that 
" was kindled against them." In their souls 
they felt the condemnation and the scorch ; 
what matter the sound or the sight by which 
the accusal and chastisement were conveyed? 
Doubtless the souls that are mainly true — 
that have really at all received the vision — 
are sooner convicted and deeper humbled than 
the unenlightened can be. It is they who 



SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 259 

have believed, and seen, and heard, who know 
at once when the Lord " comes down in the 
pillar of the cloud, and stands before the door 
of the tabernacle," as He is wont to come and 
stand ; and it is they who hear their own 
names, when like Aaron and Miriam they are 
called of Him to come forth. The word that 
He hath already spoken to them judgeth them 
in that day. 

And Aaron and Miriam were judged, while 
Moses spoke not a word. Perhaps brought 
simply face to face with him in the Cloud- 
Presence that rested about the three, it was 
sufficient. Treason confesses itself before the 
calm eyes of righteous power. They were 
convinced of their sin ; they knew that the 
displeasure of the Lord was upon them. " The 
cloud departed from off the tabernacle ; " and 
when Aaron looked upon Miriam, lo, " she 
was leprous, white as snow." 

The same thing had happened to her that 
happened to Moses long ago, when he had put 
his hand, that had held the rod of the power 
of God, into his own bosom. 

And Aaron praj^ed unto Moses against the 
punishment of their sister. " Let her not be 
as one dead ! " he entreated. 



260 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

" And Moses cried uiito the Lordr 
Power, — authority, — to accuse or to justify, 
— these lie assumed not. The Lord was ever 
behind his act ; his own word was simply a mes- 
sage. Only once do we ever find him speak- 
ing as from himself ; that was afterward, at 
the rock of Kadesh, in a moment of unguarded 
anger ; and for that he humbly received the 
instant rebuke and sentence of his God, as un- 
questioningly as if it had been given through 
his soul and lips for any other sinning Israelite. 
He accepted the eternal working of truth and 
justice into his own life as uncompromisingly, 
as wholly, without resistance or remonstrance, 
as for Aaron or Miriam, for Korah, Dathan, 
and Abiram. Indeed, for others he would in- 
tercede ; beg himself off he never would. 
Now, he prayed for Miriam. 
" Heal her now, O God, I beseech thee ! " 
But the Lord commanded her to be shut out 
for the seven days of uncleanness, and after 
that to be received again. So she was shut 
out from the camp for seven days ; and her 
people waited for her, and moved not from the 
place until she was restored. 

Sin ; penalty, in the divine order ; restora- 
tion, in the same order. They learned, proved, 



SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 2G1 

believed all that. And they learned, proved 
and believed the might of loving hnman inter- 
cession that prevails with the merciful human 
heart of God. 

After this, came the sending forward of the 
spies into the Promised Land, which the Chil- 
dren of Israel had almost reached, touching 
in their northward approach its very borders. 
And then came fear, distrust, complaining, 
rebellion again. 

They had found that lovely country of south- 
ern Palestine very good ; they had gathered 
and brought back in trophy the great grapes 
of Eshcol. But they had seen the sons of 
Anak, and been terrified ; " we were in our 
own sight as grasshoppers," they said ; " and 
so we were in their sight." And all the con- 
gregation, like spoiled, disappointed children, 
" lifted up their voice, and cried ; and the 
people wept that night." And they murmured, 
as men murmur to this day under their hin- 
drances and denials, and before the hard de- 
mands of life. 

" Would to God we had stayed in Egypt ! 
Would to God we had even died on our way ! 
Let us choose a captain to lead us, and go 
back!" 



262 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

When Caleb and Joshua urged the old, 
strong faith in God, and the fearless following 
of Him to the end, the congregation threat- 
ened them with stones. It is what unbelief 
always does. It seizes the hard, stolid facts, 
and hurls them at the heads of those who de- 
clare " the Lord is with us ; " so that in the 
soul of any Moses who still sees the glory, 
the voice of God himself seems saying " How 
long will this people provoke me ? And how 
long will it be ere they believe me, for all the 
signs which I have showed among them? " 

" I will smite them and disinherit them, and 
will make of thee a greater nation and might- 
ier than they." This word that Moses heard, 
yet again, in the one chamber of his nature 
where he abode as on God's side and in God's 
sympathies, feeling, as he believed, the very 
indignation of the Lord, — has it not been 
heard since, over and over again, in the fierce 
theologies that set the chosen and saved over 
against the evil and ignorant and rebellious 
and condemned ? "I will destroy them all, 
and make of you mine inheritance ; " have not 
they who counted themselves on the Lord's 
side thought that they heard plainly this 
declaration of his judgment and awarding? 



SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 263 

Have not many of them in complacent content 
praised God for this " election " ? 

But Moses, with his tender human heart, 
that was most truly God's heart in him, prayed 
against the thought. He reminded God, as it 
were, of His own long-suffering ; he argued 
as with Him the scoff of the heathen nations 
if they should behold the promise fail ; he 
pleaded earnestl}^, " Pardon the great iniquity 
of this people in the greatness of thy mercy." 

Was the conflict of feeling, — the argu- 
ment, — the entreaty, — really and literally 
between the mind of Moses and the Mind of 
God, as for the moment opposed concerning 
this matter ? Or was God's Spirit at work 
in Moses upon both sides of the question 
on which hung a national life and the integ- 
rity of a Divine Covenant, balancing against 
national lapse and un worthiness and the just 
indignation of an insulted Holiness and Good- 
ness ? Were God's own Reason and Mercy 
convincing and persuading his disheartened 
and offended minister to His own patient, for- 
bearing steadfastness in behalf of His weak 
children, — prevailing with him to a new 
faith, a generous, enduring hope, a mighty 
persistence for Israel rather than a desperate 



264 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

breaking -off and abandonment, and an im- 
petuous resolve to take upon himself, single- 
handed, the work and purpose of the Lord, 
trusting to Jehovah to make his everlasting 
promise good, even by the raising up of a new 
nation in his prophet's own posterity ? 

Did not the Faith of Moses struggle, pos- 
sibly, in the strength and help of the Lord, 
through this wrench of disappointment, this 
humiliation for his people's sin, and hopeless- 
ness through their forfeiture, to a new ex- 
pansion, a broader light, a higher grasp than 
ever of the eternal and invincible good-will of 
God ? Have we not, in the result and show- 
ing of this experience, another article in the 
grand Belief of Moses ? Did he not appre- 
hend, and trust, after all, with a firm confi- 
dence, that " God would have all men to be 
saved, and come to the knowledge of his 
truth"? 

Nevertheless, there had to be the interval 
of loss. God will not even pardon in the 
hurry that negatives the splendor of his right- 
eousness. " I have pardoned according to thy 
word," He says to Moses, " but as truly as I 
live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory 
of the Lord." 



SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 265 

Nothing less than this shall be my salvation. 
There shall be no partial favor, nor sparing. 
I will save you Hebrew people, that all people 
may be saved. I am leading you, that all 
peoples may at last be led. I will not indulge 
you in your cowardice and rebellions ; I will 
only bring you into the land, and I will only 
glorify the whole earth, with my absolute 
righteousness, in you and for you, and for all 
men, which is my glory. And this, as I live, 
shall come to pass. Therefore, depart again 
from these very borders of your almost ob- 
tained possession in my name. These men 
who have seen my glory and have not believed, 
shall not come into this Canaan. They shall 
perish in this wilderness. 

So God's anger and his mercy spoke with 
each other in the inward hearing of Moses. 
So they revealed themselves to his spiritual 
perception. 

" Very well," do you say ? " That was how 
Moses saw things. That is all you can prove ; 
and it proves nothing beyond itself, — that 
Moses thought so. Suppose we, to-day, do 
not see and think in precisely such fashion ? 
Are we over-ruled by Moses ? Are our own 
persuasions of no account ? " 



266 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

Possibly not ; possibly yes, in their own de- 
gree. That was Aaron and Miriam's question. 
All depends upon what we call persuasion. 
Persuasion is a through and through, positive 
thing. It must needs be of sometohat. It 
can scarcely be of a negative. If a man 
reckons it a persuasion, when he only thinks 
himself persuaded that there is nothing to be 
persuaded about, he simply has no witness to 
bring. Moses had. And it is of testimony 
that we are considering. 

But again may not a man, through obliquity 
or partiality of understanding, be persuaded 
of a mistake ? Undoubtedly. Here comes in 
the qualification for witness. And we have 
the test right here. 

" My servant Moses is not so," — a prophet 
of dreams and visions only, — " who is faith- 
ful in all my housed 

" He that doeth the will, shall know of the 
doctrine." 

" We speak that we do know, and testify 
that which we have seen." 

Verily, the transplendence of the New Tes- 
tament lightens all through the literal story 
of the Old. He that doeth always the things 
that please the Father, hath the revelation and 



SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 267 

the authority from the Father. He is the 
Sent unto men ; he is Lawgiver and Inter- 
cessor. 

The stories of the Old Scripture concerning 
calling, obedience, and inheritance of promise, 
— or of disloyalty, perversion, forfeiture, — 
are the parables of history which are one 
with, and repeated in, the spiritual parables of 
the New. Read after this narration of the 
self-seeking of Miriam and Aaron, and their 
punishment iu the forbiddance to their enter- 
ing into the Promised Land, the teaching of 
our Lord concerning the heavenly marriage 
of things and spirit, — of act and life, — to 
which God bids his children in the sonship, 
and to which they refuse to come, seeking 
each his own, and the fancied getting of his 
own, rather than the beautiful, great Will of 
God, and his preparing for them. 

" The King prepared a marriage for his 
son." A uniting of life and circumstance 
with love and spiritual understanding ; of the 
outward with the inward, which is perfect life, 
and the place and condition of it, to which 
his Providence continually leads us. The 
Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey, 
with life and sweetness and satisfying of the 



268 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

whole nature of men created in the image of 
their God, human and divine, is only reached 
by faithful following ; by a coming to the call, 
a ready answer to the bidding ; which, " if we 
will hear his voice," is always " JVow.^^ 

In the creation of things, and the gift of 
spirit, God prepared this marriage festival for 
the two, which, made one, should be a per- 
petual rejoicing. But his children would not 
see ; would not care for the grand whole ; 
would be engrossed with the little, tangible 
thing of the moment, — the pair of oxen, the 
bit of land, yes, even the wife, taking her as a 
mere earthly good, and for companionship in 
the material ; not comprehending the full, true 
gift in anything. So the early generations of 
men refused and lost their sonship ; slighted 
the great Bidding ; went astray after their 
own small imaginations and covetous inven- 
tions. And God took his bidding back. 

Pie changed it. Still He sent forth his 
angels — of birth and welcome into his earth, 
the beginning of his Kingdom — of material 
ministering and sustaining, — and the world 
— of life — was full ; " the wedding was fur- 
nished with guests, both bad and good." 



SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 269 

Now follows what in the parable, to careless 
reading, seems almost like a harsh injustice. 
He had " compelled " them in (how often we 
hear a man say, " I did not ask to be born " !) ; 
and his house was full, of wild, ignorant, un- 
tutored human creatures, — in the mass, and 
each one also, both bad and good. 

He comes and speaks to one — of many — 
who has not on the wedding garment. He 
calls him " friend." 

He asks the poor, bad, unappareled human 
soul, " How camest thou in hither, not hav- 
ing a wedding garment ? " And the soul has 
nothing to say. Not even, " I was compelled 
hither." For the first time, his want con- 
demns him. He sees he is not fit to be there 
at all, in the King's House. 

What does the condemnation mean ? We 
learn elsewhere. " This is the condemnation, 
that they love darkness rather than light." 

"Bind him, hand and foot," — in the body 
and the bodily life, — "and cast him" — let 
him loose — " into the outer darkness. There 
shall be " — there in the willful darkness there 
must be — " weeping and gnashing of teeth." 

It means nothing less than the word of God 



270 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

— in all patience, in all compassion^ — for 
He waits and suffers with us — to the misled 
world : " Go and learn. Ye are all called, 
but ye are not all yet chosen. Ye have not 
yet chosen Me. Go into the outside life of 
darkness that you have made, and learn your 
need of light. Only then can the light come, 
which is none the less waiting, even at the 
heart of the very darkness." 

It means nothing less than the very mean- 
ing of all the travail of this present evil world, 
that would have its own blind way ; nothing 
less than the eternal answer to the awful ques- 
tion about good and evil. Evil is the putting 
off of good. It is the seizing of the little and 
low, to the exclusion of the large and high. 
The good waits till the evil has done with it- 
self, and is self -rejected. 

Aaron and Miriam were not to enter into 
the Promised Land. The heads of the tribes 
that were sent up to see the land were never 
to come in and dwell there. They were still 
to serve and follow in the wilderness, accept- 
ing penalty and delay. They were to die in 
their long wandering, and leave their bodies in 
the desert. The seven days in which Miriam 
was shut out from the camp were the days of 



SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 271 

her purification. The forty years of patient 
pilgrimage and penance were the purification 
of the tribes. These things were types of all 
shutting out from an immediate Canaan of 
mere pleasantness, while men are purged and 
made ready for the final entering in to the 
eternal satisfying ; to the Marriage Supper of 
the joined Earth and Heaven ; the Redemp- 
tion, which is the Manifestation of the One 
Will done in both forever. 

Up and down the wild, barren Arabian 
stretches of desert and mountain wilderness, 
which, after all, only measured from south to 
north a fourteen days' journey direct from 
Sinai to Palestine, the Hebrew people wan- 
dered and encamped, leading their nomadic 
life for forty years longer. What was it all 
most like but the drifting of our human expe- 
rience up and down the earth and along the 
ages of it, between the first Giving of the 
Commandments of Life and the entering into 
its full fruition ? With the very heaven al- 
most within our reach — with only such a little 
distance between the Bidding and the Reward, 
if we would follow the direct way — we wind 
and tangle our paths in a blind bewilderment ; 



272 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

we make our long tarrjings in a few scanty 
feeding-places ; we grow old and pass away 
without ever having come to the full faith of 
the heavenl}^ nearness, to the sure, realizing 
vision of the glory that waits close by. It is 
like being lost in storm and darkness, toiling 
exhausted up and down within sliort step and 
call of one's own door, and perishing in the 
night at the threshold of due's home. 

The Israelites were seized with a pang of 
compunction for their own folly, — a convic- 
tion of their own loss. How much of it was 
pure repentance seems very doubtful. Per- 
haps even then, if there had been repentance 
enough, there might have been remission and 
restoration enough. " We have sinned," they 
said. " But we are here, and we will go up 
unto the place which the Lord hath prom- 
ised." 

We will obey ; we will dare the giants ; we 
will conquer and inherit! It was like the 
spoiled child's cry, in very tempest of rage and 
resistance, " I will be good ! Give me the 
thing you meant to give me, and have taken 
from me ! " 

But that is not the repentance which pre- 



SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 273 

vails. " They presumed to go up into the hill- 
top ; nevertheless, the ark of the covenant of 
the Lord, and Moses, departed not out of the 
camj). Then the Amalekites came down, and 
the Canaanites which dwelt in that hill, and 
smote them, and discomfited them, even unto 
Hormah." 

The intervening time, after that driving 
back, was a time of teaching. The signs and 
ordinances were given ; the atonements and 
the punishments were declared. The burnt 
offerings — the endurance and yielding of 
sacrifice — and the glad free - will offerings, 
were instituted; the beautiful reminders of 
the fringed borders of their garments, and the 
ribband hem of blue, were appointed, to be a 
remembrance of all the commandments of the 
Lord and a sign of their loyalty to them ; gar- 
ments being that clothing of life in the exter- 
nals of daily living, which, to its last details — 
its every separate thread as in a fringe, and in 
the color of the heavenly that should rest upon 
and mark it — was to be made " holy unto 
their God." For, the word of the ordering 
ends, in the fifteenth chapter of Numbers, " I 
am the Lord your God; which brought you 



274 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

out of the land of Egypt, to be your God : / 
am the Lord your God." 

Yes, even in the punishment, the discipline, 
the putting off. Even in the wilderness of 
the waiting, and the hard, slow learning. 

" Though I make my bed in hell. He is 
there also." 

In all these things, "the Lord spake unto 
Moses, and Moses unto the Children of Is- 
rael." In all these things, in the very heart 
of Moses, as well as in his utterance to the 
people, the authority, the claim, was not that 
of any man, or of any human assertion. It 
was that of the " Thus saith the Lord." And 
the credential, given of God himself concern- 
ing his representative, was the one warrant, 
upon the only basis and condition, " This man 
is my servant ; faithful in all my house.^^ 

Like unto this was the yet more intimately 
divine commission and authority announced at 
the Jordan, when the Holy Ghost came down 
from heaven like a dove and rested upon the 
Son of Man. "This is my beloved Son, in 
whom I am well pleased. Hear ye him." 

It was all the claim of Christ himself. " I 
do nothing of myself : He that sent me is 



SEDITION OF AARON AND MIRIAM 275 

with me : the Father hath not left me alone : 
for I do always the things that please Him. 
Which of you convinceth me of sin? The 
works that I do bear witness of me. If I do 
not the works of my Father, believe me not. 
But if I do, believe the works." And this, in 
order that " ye may know and believe " the 
great truth of God's Life in his Humanity, 
— " that the Father is in me, and I in Him ! " 



CHAPTER XV 

THE REVOLT OF KORAH 

It was in the time of this training of the 
wilderness life that the last desperate rebellion 
and presumption arose, and was fearfully pun- 
ished. 

And here we come to the inquiry as to what 
Moses believed, and leads us to believe, about 
Divine Judgment and Chastisement. 

Keeping in mind always that what we are 
after is the interior faith, whatever may or 
may not have been the outer fact or event, we 
come face to face, at this next point of the his- 
tory, with the whole great question of what are 
the direct and personal judgments of God 
upon transgression and evil life. The evidence 
of Moses as lawgiver, interpreter, prophet, 
sharer in spirit of the counsel of the Almighty, 
is of extreme consequence, let the story of his 
agency, under such faith as moved him stead- 
fastly, be what it may. 

Moses certainly believed that all things are 



THE liEVOLT OF KORAH "111 

of the Will of God. Whether we in our later 
time have so advanced upon Moses as to have 
gotten bej^ond the Will of God, is the question 
of to-day which assails the positions of faith 
and compels her to the reconstruction of all 
her lines. 

Does God have his way in the whirlwind 
and the storm ; are the clouds the dust of his 
feet as He presses on to his purpose ; or have 
whirlwind and storm broken loose, in the 
strength of their committed law, from the im- 
mediate Divine Intent, and are men subject 
and accountable to the elements only, behind 
which is no Heart with a present, personal 
love, no instant Thought of Fatherly care, 
no Righteousness ordaining and controlling, 
through the causes and processes, that which 
happens in the probative, formative experience 
of mankind upon this little planet of the 
Lord's — or indeed is it the Lord's — making ? 

It seems as if it might be worth while to 
leave all the detail of cause and effect, to for- 
get for a little the chemistries, geologies, biol- 
ogies, and atmospheric forces, and our own 
latest sagacities about them, and see what sig- 
nificance we can find in the simplicity of the 
attitude and act of a m'an who took things at 



278 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

fountain head and at first hand, before God 
had so far fulfilled his gradual revelation to 
his children as to show them in part his won- 
derful handling of his creation, and so exj)and 
their understandings with his supreme reasons 
and methods in the course of things, that they 
might be able, at last, to " comprehend, with 
all saints, the breadth, and length, and depth, 
and height ; and to know the love which pass- 
eth knowledge^ and be filled with all the full- 
ness of God." 

If this is begging the question. Saint Paul 
begged it grandly for the Ephesians and for 
us, when he stood between the knowledges of 
the Old and the New, and answered magnifi- 
cently beforehand the very scoffs and doubts of 
a half-comprehension to which this nineteenth 
century has attained, and in which it halts, 
dazzled with itself, and bewildered by the vast- 
ness not yet penetrated, saying, " This must 
needs be all. The mind of man can no farther 
go." If the mind of man were to be the final 
measure, this would be the conclusion assur- 
edly ; but we have, beyond, the mind of God. 
And God is g^ivino' us an all-round education. 

Is it quite impossible to conceive that in 
the earlier time, — when the thing for men to 



THE REVOLT OF KORAH 279 

learn first of all and inclusively was that " the 
earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof," 
and that " He ruleth by his power, forever," — 
cause and effect may have been set in closer, 
swifter, visible connection, and time and event 
been brought in both spiritual and physical 
conjunction, so that a sin and its consequence 
may have been shown in illustrated relation, 
in such manner that the history should stand 
for a sign to the generations ? It seems at 
least that Moses believed in this order and 
sure connection ; and that he so relied upon 
its truth in the dealing of the Almighty, that 
when sin raged openly and rebellion became 
defiant, he expected the natural convulsion to 
follow, and dared in • the sublime courage of 
his conviction to say the word before the peo- 
ple which he heard inwardly from the Lord, 
and to invoke and command, in the Eternal 
Name, the Eternal Justice. Is it so strange a 
thing to human nature to cry out, even now, 
from a depth below its paralysis of deadened 
credence, " AYliy does not the earth open, and 
swallow up this corruption, — these horrors of 
evildoing and the evildoers ? " 

Moses does not ask " Why not ? " but de- 
clares that it will come to pass ; and appar- 



280 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

ently it did. If we must have an exhaustive 
rational philosophy for every happening, leav- 
ing God no choice in ordering, need we find 
it difficult to conceive a law which we often 
admit is mysteriously indicated, between spir- 
itual and moral insanities and excitements, 
and manifest disturbance in outward nature ? 
Crimes and disasters seem epidemic and coin- 
cident ; the lesson of the revolt and destruction 
of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram is more than 
hinted again in the juxtapositions of modern 
ferment and outrage and presumptions with 
correspondent awfulness of human slaughter 
and agonies. They, indeed, upon whom the 
tower of Siloam falls are not sinners above all ; 
nevertheless, without repentance, men shall 
always likewise perish. The natural shall suf- 
fer the wrath of the natural ; the sowing to 
the flesh shall have the reaping of corruption. 
It was the Spirit of the Holy against which 
Korah and his compeers rebelled. " Ye take 
too much upon you," they said to their spirit- 
ual leaders. " All the congregation are holy ; 
every one of them ; the Lord is among them ; 
wherefore lift ye up yourselves above the con- 
gregation of the Lord ? " They could not 
recognize the lifting up that was of the Lord. 



THE REVOLT OF KORAH 281 

They fell back upon the general truth, as men 
do now, that the Lord shuts no one out ; that 
He is present to all, reveals himself to all ; 
and so they would have nothing of degrees, 
or of appointment ; they wanted neither lead- 
ing nor help ; they would not be commanded. 
They flung aside the vital argument and evi- 
dence that the more they were of the Lord, 
the more surely they would recognize his mes- 
sages; the more intuitively they would yield 
to the larger inspiration, through whomsoever 
it might come. 

" Our faith is as good as yours ; we are not 
bound to your opinions or declarations ; we 
are able to think for ourselves," very often 
means, when traced and sifted to its motive 
centre, " We will have no more faith than 
we like ; we will think, or not think, as we 
please." It is the escape into irresponsibil- 
ity ; it is taking refuge from the special in 
the catholic ; from the personal in the vague. 
'' God is with us all ; with one as much as 
another ; therefore as individuals we need not 
trouble ourselves." 

" When Moses heard it, he fell upon his 
face." Down, — prone upon the earth, he 
went ; overwhelmed with the abasement of his 



282 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

brethren ; overwhelmed with the failure of his 
long labor with them. He threw himseK as 
at the footstool of the Almighty, in penitence 
for them ; in a despairing indignation also ; 
in a shame of hopelessness and defeat. 

What did God say to him, lying there ? 
What did the troubled earth itself, perhaps, 
murmur in his ear ? Did some premonition 
of the coming earthquake thrill him as he lay ; 
and did God at the same moment utter in his 
soul of prophecy, " Fear not ; I will judge for 
my chosen " ? 

How long it was before he stood upon his 
feet again, and " spake unto Korah and unto 
all his company," the text does not narrate. 
That awful, silent interview with his God, and 
with God's majestic force in nature, is as secret 
as the audiences on Mount Sinai. It is all 
left in the little blank between the fourth and 
fifth verses of that strange chapter of visita- 
tions. But what he said wdien he did rise and 
look upon them was this : — 

" Even to-morrow the Lord will shew who 
are his, and who are holy ; and wdll cause him 
to come near unto him ; even him whom he hath 
chosen will he cause to come near unto him." 

Must there not have been a solemn light 



THE REVOLT OF KORAN 283 

upon his face, an ineffable vibration in his 
voice, as the words were uttered ? 

" This do " was his grand, cahn ordering. 
"Take your censers, Korah and all his com- 
pany ; and put fire therein, and put incense 
in them before the Lord to-morrow ; and it 
shall be that the man whom the Lord shall 
choose, he shall be holy. Y^e take too much 
upon you^ ye sons of Levi.'' "* 

Their own words, weighted with a stern, 
grave fitness of rebuke, he turned back upon 
them. 

"It is he whom the Lord doth choose.'' It 
is not the man who presumeth, and chooseth 
himself. Wait upon the Lord ; offer Him 
your fire and incense ; see what He will do 
with it ; and see whom the Lord will have, to 
receive his word, and to do his bidding. He 
will not let you mistake, if you seek Him, and 
not yourselves. Ye have already been chosen, 
to do your part. 

"Is it a small thing that the God of Israel 
hath separated you from the congregation of 
Israel, to bring you near to himself to do the 
service of the tabernacle of the Lord, and to 
stand before the congregation to minister unto 
them ? Seek ye the priesthood also ? " 



284 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

Moses believed, with his whole soul, that 
disobedience to God is discontinuity of his 
plan for us. That only some convulsion of 
life can re-locate the broken lines, and restore 
to the path of righteous law the beneficent 
working of his purpose. The people of Israel 
were living in the midst of mystery and sign ; 
in the close, awful manifesting of the corre- 
spondence of the natural with the spiritual. 
There are such periods in the dealings of God 
with men. The nearer the two realms come 
to conjunction at any crisis of earth history, 
the more apparent is the intimate, mysterious 
relation and interaction of the moral and the 
physical. It was so in the dispensation of the 
Exodus ; it was so every here and there in 
the experience of the Hebrews, when their pro- 
phets and kings lived and worked contempo- 
raneously. It was so in the time of Christ's 
coming into the earthly. Saint John tells us 
with tremendous power how it shall be when 
the Son of Man shall appear at last in full 
revelation of God ; when the two kingdoms 
of form and spirit — of life and its embodied 
operation — shall be absolutely conjoined, in 
the Eternal Truth and in its instant evidence. 
It is the angel standing with one foot on the 



THE REVOLT OF KORAH 285 

sea and the other upon the land, — touching 
alike the tangible and the intangible. 

This way it was that Moses stood, from the 
beginning of his mission when he put his shoes 
from off his feet, baring himself of common 
insulation in things of sense, to receive and 
interpret through all the visible the vast reali- 
ties and meanings of the invisible. With one 
hand upon the rod of Almighty Power, and 
the other holding his brethren in human sym- 
pathy, he was simply God's channel for reach- 
ing down into the daily consciousness of a 
certain famil}^ of his children, chosen for the 
experience, such communication of his contin- 
ual relation with the souls and lives of men, 
and the unity of his thought and act with them, 
as should send down to all posterit}^ an instance 
and reminder, overliving all intervals of dark- 
ness and doubt, and pointing through waiting 
ages to a consummation in which the Lord's 
tabernacle shall be with men forever, the 
government upon his shoulder, and the whole 
earth filled with the knowledge of his power 
and presence, the acknowledgment of his rule 
and righteousness, in every least and greatest 
thing. 

If we take this high, strong ground of essen- 



286 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

tial faith, we shall find no very disturbing 
unlikelihood in any marked, occasional coin- 
cidence between moral and physical event. 
Nearly or remotely we shall recognize such law 
and connection as irrefragable ; we shall feel 
as Moses felt, when his whole spirit was intense 
with deeply apprehensive sorrow for the blind 
dereliction of his brethren, and keenly open to 
the premonitions of the disaster it must bring. 
We shall not find it hard to suppose that his 
bodily senses, strung to a corresponding acute- 
ness, were able to perceive the approach of 
the concomitant external catastrophe ; and we 
may feel that he could know better than we may 
know, how much and surely the one thing had 
to do with the other ; that he could at least, 
at that immediate juncture, forefeel and have 
presentiment — with sure prophetic instinct far 
beyond the feebler hint we call presentiment 
— of how awfully the one might be about to 
answer with its sign to the other, and declare, 
through their mysterious correlation, its tre- 
mendous judgment. The bolt strikes where 
the conditions concur. Possibly we know 
more of terrestrial causes and operations than 
Moses knew ; but do we stand closer to the 
celestial ? And from which side may the 



THE REVOLT OF KORAH 287 

more searching and inclusive perception and 
evidence come ? 

Are such interpretations "fine-drawn," " far- 
fetched " ? Very well ; so are the insights and 
outsights of microscope and telescope ; yet we 
delight in confessing to their revelations. No 
matter how far off, or how far in, a thing may 
be, since it is there^ and we can find it. 

The sin was there ; the earthquake was 
there ; the solemn warning and prophecy were 
uttered between them. Was it a jumbled, 
accidental juxtaposition, a rushing together of 
things in pure confusion, — or were the calm, 
strong, ordering Will of God, and the hand 
of his unabdicated Power, as manifest in the 
sequence and logic of the event as we should 
suppose such Will and Power, once estab- 
lished, and acting through particulars to gen- 
erals, and from vast generals to wonderful 
minute particulars, would continue to be ? If 
the Will and Power were not there, what was, 
and where are they ? And how much of God's 
ovsm work in the universe is done behind his 
back? 

In the strong sense of his belief, and in his 
steadfast looking to the Lord for His own 



288 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

token of judgment, — not vengeance, for what- 
ever the unswerving law of God may do, it 
can but be the mighty operation of his truth, 
and the justifying of all question and per- 
plexity between right and wrong, — Moses 
called the rebellious leaders to him, and com- 
manded them with a summons before the Lord. 
"Be thou," he said to Korah, — for the other 
men had refused to conie up, — " be thou and 
all thy company before the Lord, thou, and 
they, and Aaron, to-morrow ; and take every 
man his censer, and put incense in them, and 
bring ye before the Lord every man his cen- 
ser, two hundred and fifty censers ; thou also, 
and Aaron, each of you his censer." 

And they did as Moses said. Rebels as 
they were, they dared not yet in act rebel. 
They could murmur and accuse before the 
man Moses ; but when the man was filled with 
the presence and power of the Holy Ghost, 
it was Jehovah's own look that blazed upon 
them through his servant's eyes ; it was the 
voice of Almiglitiness that commanded by his 
lips. 

Each man took his censer, — who shall say 
with what misgivings and secret shakings of 
evil purpose ? — and Korah gathered them all, 



THE REVOLT OF KORAH 289 

in the way of their wont, before the door of 
the tabernacle, where Moses and Aaron stood 
augustly, reverently, waiting. 

" And the glory of the Lord appeared unto 
all the congregation." 

Out of the shining of the Excellent Glory 
came a word to Moses and to Aaron. They 
were in the exaltation of the Spirit, and they 
heard things which man may no otherwise 
hear. They were not afraid. They were 
waiting, serenely, to see what God would do. 
They believed surely that He would do some- 
thing. He always had. They brought all 
their questions to Him for his decision. They 
neither ruled nor governed in their own names. 
" See what the Lord will shew," said they to 
the people. 

Whatever premonition of awfulness in the 
showing might have been in them, they thought 
not of any safety to themselves, any choosing 
of securer place. The Lord knew his own ; 
the Lord would judge, and make manifest. Is 
there anything like the sublimity of this faith 
now living and acting among men of power ? 
Does any man invoke God's righteousness and 
the declaration of his truth in the affairs of 
nations, and stand up in his might, waiting 



290 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

for that which He will say? And yet the 
Lord has not departed from the earth. 

" Separate yourselves from among this con- 
gregation, that I may consume them in a 
moment." 

To what in Moses and Aaron did this in- 
spiration of warning appeal, — making sug- 
gestion of sparing them only, and of sending 
swift, consuming wrath upon the whole unruly 
host? Was it a word of test, showing them 
what their own hasty, uncompromising indig- 
nation might have been, and how a human 
wrath might deal with sin, if it could handle 
the weapons of Omnipotence ? 

Again Moses turned from personal feeling 
and took share with God himself. Again he 
fell upon his face, and with God '^repented 
him " of the evil that would not yet repent of 
itself. Again he took side not with the anger, 
but with the mercy of the Lord. 

" O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, 
shall one man sin, and wilt thou be wroth with 
the whole congregation?" 

It is in the prayers He gives men to pray 
that the Lord reveals his intent, larger than 
their first fear or appealing. 

" Speak unto the congregation," the answer 



THE REVOLT OF KORAH 291 

came, commanding Moses and Aaron. Give 
them all the warning I have given you. " Say, 
Get you up from about the tabernacle of Korah, 
Dathan, and Abiram." 

It was the demand again, " AVho is on the 
Lord's side this day? " 

And Moses and the elders went over to 
where Dathan and Abiram were, and from the 
doors of their tents turned to the people. 

And Moses said, " Depart, I pray you, from 
the tents of these wicked men, and touch no- 
thing of theirs, lest ye be consumed in all their 
sins." " /Sms," take notice, was the word, — 
not intnishment. 

So in the yet untroubled light of the clear 
day, while there was no threat in the air, the 
congregation divided itself slowly away, and 
left the three chiefs, with their wives and 
their families, standing before their open 
tabernacles. 

And Moses, borne away by the Spirit in 
him, having returned, we may suppose, to his 
own place, at the door of the Lord's tent, 
spake with a terrible investment of authority. 
Slow of speech he was, and the weighty sen- 
tences must have fallen from, his lips with an 
awful deliberation. 



292 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

" Hereby ye shall knojv that the Lord hath 
sent me to do all these works. They are not 
of my own mind. 

" If these men die the common death of all 
men, or if they be visited after the visitation 
of all men ; then the Lord hath not sent me. 

*' But if the Lord make a new thing,' and 
the earth open her mouth, and swallow them 
up, with all that appertain unto them, and 
they go down alive into the pit ; then ye shall 
understand that these men have provoked the 
Lordr 

More slowly still must those last solemnly 
accusing and condemning words have come, as 
Moses stood in the environing Light of the 
Great Presence before the tent of his congre- 
gation ; and Korah, Dathan, and Abiram re- 
mained apart, motionless, silent, as men deaf, 
dazed, confounded, not comprehending the 
tongue in which their Prophet spake, nor see- 
ing the vision that he saw ; not knowing, in- 
deed, if they had understood, which way to 
turn, or where the danger might strike, if any 
were to befall. 

A brief, breathless pause, — a human hush 
and a hush of nature that had doubtless been 
slowly creeping over all things, as it does be- 



THE REVOLT OF KORAH 293 

fore a dreadful voice or convulsion of nature 
comes, — and then, the rolling, the upheaval, 
the opening- chasm, the forth-leaping fire, — 
and in the rending shock and reeling confu- 
sion, while " all Israel fled " further and fur- 
ther into the wilderness, Korah and all his fol- 
lowers, their families, their homes, their goods, 
went down, perished, and disappeared from 
among the host of their kins-people forever. 

Does this seem like fable ? 

If it be fable, what yet more tremendous 
reality does it stand for ? 

The sure dealing of God with sin — the 
absolute destruction of evil, with whatever it 
may involve — was at any rate a vital point 
in the Belief of Moses. 

Was Moses a deluded man, or a deluder ? 
Or were the truth and the power of God 
manifest in him ? 

Centuries later, the Christ of Nazareth bore 
witness, in direct word, and in parable, to the 
Former Testimony. 

" I have not come to destroy the Law or the 
Prophecy, but to fulfil." 

" Ye have Moses, and the prophets ; if ye 
believe not them, neither would ye believe 
though one rose from the dead." 



294 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

Is Moses obsolete ? Then is Christianity 
obsolete, and of no effect ; and the word of 
the Lord is come to pass, and the rising from 
the dead also has been in vain. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE BUDDED ROD 

A SWIFT plague among the rebel hosts 
followed the destruction of Korah and his im- 
mediate fellow conspirators. Fourteen thou- 
sand and seven hundred were swept away. 
These are awful numbers. We stand aghast 
at catastrophes in our day, of fire and flood, 
crash and explosion, when hundreds perish ; 
we can hardly take into our imagination the 
devastations in far lands, by earthquake or 
rushing overflow, or pestilence, when whole 
regions of country are depopulated. And yet 
these things do happen. The Lord seems to 
account nothing of earthly existence or human 
suffering, when He stretches forth his hand, 
— or permits the tremendous operation of his 
Law — whichever way may be chosen to ex- 
press the working of his Will and Method, — 
to purge, and purge, and do away the evils out 
of his earth, and make great, new departures 
in it. 



296 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

Concentrated in a history of forty years of 
desert life and wandering, in the experience 
of a people of twelve great families held mar- 
velously together in a nationality that survived 
exile, oppression, deprivation, weariness, dis- 
heartenment, homelessness, — all the forces of 
a divine control and compulsion illustrated 
themselves as in an intense, representative 
rush of event ; gathering to a focal point of 
time within the memory of children born in 
Egypt and surviving to reach Canaan, an 
awful, beautiful showing and sequence of 
Omnipotent purpose and dealing with men 
through the disciplines and providings of their 
life-sojourn between the dim, low, unevolved 
Past of their being and the glorious fulfillment 
in the Land that Is to Be. 

For what said Ezekiel, when long after, in 
the Babylonian captivity, he told over to Is- 
rael, as with the voice of the Lord, the story of 
this dealing and " leading " in the wilderness ? 
What meaning, speaking by Divine command, 
and instant inspiration, did he make of it ? 

" As I live, saith the Lord God, surely with 
a mighty hand and with a stretched out arm, 
and with fury poured out, will I rule over 
you. . . . and I will bring you into the wilder- 



THE BUDDED ROD 297 

ness of the people, and there will I plead''' 
— mark the word — "with you face to face. 
Like as I pleaded with your fathers in the 
wilderness of the land of Egypt, so will I plead 
with you, saith the Lord God." 

The word is reiterated. To " plead " is to 
"entreat;" to "entreat" is both to "man- 
age " and to " beseech," — to " draw " toward 
an end. All God's management, or dealing, is 
an entreating, a beseeching : a drawing of men 
unto their best and only real good, in himself. 

" And I will cause you to pass under the 
rod, and I will bring you into the bond of 
the covenant : and I will purge out from 
among you the rebels, and them that trans- 
gress against me. . . . For in mine holy 
mountain, in the mountain of the height of 
Israel^ saith the Lord God, there shall all the 
house of Israel serve me : there will I accept 
them. ... I will accept you " (the speech 
changes tenderly here into the second person) 
" with your sweet savour, . . . and I will be 
sanctified in you. . . . And ye shall know 
that I am the Lord, when I shall bring you 
into the land of Israel, into the country for the 
which I lifted up mine hand to give it to your 
fathers. And then shall ye remember your 



298 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

ways, and all your doings, . . . and ye shall 
loathe yourselves in your own sight for all 
your evils that ye have committed. And ye 
shall know that I am the Lord, when I have 
wrought with you for my name's sake, not ac- 
cording to your wicked ways, nor according 
to your corrupt doings, O ye house of Israel, 
saith the Lord God." 

And then comes the prophecy of the devour- 
ing flame which " all flesh shall see that the 
Lord hath kindled ; " the " flaming flame " 
from the south unto the north that " shall not 
be quenched " till all is burned away that the 
Lord will have burned away. 

" Ah, Lord God ! " cries Ezekiel, " they 
say of me. Doth he not speak in parables ? " 

How else, in phrase or event, has the word 
of the Lord ever been spoken ? 

Did not David, rehearsing in his seventy- 
eighth Psalm the whole story of that old wrath 
of God " against the disobedient and rebel- 
lious," when He " smote down the chosen men 
of Israel," and " slew them until they sought 
him, . . . and remembered that God was their 
Rock, and the high God their Redeemer," — 
did not David begin, " I will open my mouth 
in a parable : I will utter darJc sayings of old 



THE BUDDED ROD 299 

which we have heard and known, and our 
fathers have told us " ? 

" For," he goes on presently, '' He " (the 
Lord) " established a testimony in Jacobs and 
appointed a law in Israel^ which he com- 
manded our fathers that they should make 
them known to their children : that the gener- 
ation to come might know them : . . . that 
they might set their hope in God, and not for- 
get the works of God, but keep his command- 
ments." 

And then, from the dividing of the Red Sea, 
through all the giving, and leading, and re- 
straining, and punishing, and bringing in to 
the inheritance ; through the backslidings and 
provocations and idolatries even there, where 
He established them ; through the captivities, 
the judgments of sword and fire, to the fresh 
smiting of their enemies, and the choosing of 
the tribe of Judah ; to the calling of David 
from feeding the ewes to the shepherding and 
feeding of the Lord's j^eople, — the Psalm 
chants on the chronicle, to the summing up, in 
one sweet striking of the sure keynote of all ; 
the one solution and reconciling of both mercy 
and judgment : — 

" So He fed them according to the integrity 



30.0 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

of his heart ; and guided them by the skilful- 
ness of his hands." 

How should it not be a parable ? And how 
should not the Lord's Love in it be a Consum- 
ing Fire ? 

It was just after all this terror and desola- 
tion, — after Aaron, bearing fire from the al- 
tar in his censer, had stood between the living 
and the dead till the plague was stayed, — 
that another parable — a gentle one, a sign of 
beauty, yet carrying with it the supreme de- 
claration of Almighty Will, and an absolute 
quenching of murmurs and querulous discon- 
tents — was shown, in simple object lesson, to 
the congregation. 

" Let every one of the princes of Israel, ac- 
cording to the twelve tribes, bring his rod," 
was the command that came to Moses ; " and 
write thou every man's name upon his rod ; 
and lay them up in the tabernacle of the con- 
gregation before the testimony, where I will 
meet with you." 

And Moses spoke to the children of Israel, 
and their princes came, and brought each his 
rod, the sign of his rule, as they were bidden ; 
" and the rod of Aaron was among their rods." 



THE BUDDED ROD 3.01 

Whose sceptre shall rule ? And by what 
right is the rule given ? 

The whole question of authority in human 
affairs was under test. Priesthood, or king- 
hood, or any leadership, — what is to give real 
claim or commission in either? What shall 
be the seal and token of divine right ? Is it 
birth ? Is it the might of the strong ? Is it 
craft and cunning wisdom, that which we have 
learned to call diplomacy^ from doubleness ? 

It is something that the Lord himself will 
show; that He has shown in all history, when 
the need, and the hour, and the man, converg- 
ing along the lines of a sure ordination, arrive 
together. 

It is something which has the Divine in it ; 
no dead dynastic authority; no ecclesiastical 
election or imposition ; no grasp of self-will, or 
any plot, or state-stroke ; but a living reality, 
which asserts itself by life ; which puts forth 
from within its beautiful, fitting purpose. 

It is a short story, this of the laying up of 
the twelve rods, and what came of it ; it is told 
in only nine verses of a chapter in the Book 
of Xumbers. ^ This is the end of it : — 

" Moses laid up the rods before the Lord in 
the tabernacle of witness. 



302 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

" And it came to pass, that on the morrow 
Moses went into the tabernacle of witness ; 
and behold, the rod of Aaron for the house of 
Levi was budded, and brought forth buds, and 
bloomed blossoms, and yielded almonds. 

" And Moses brought out all the rods from 
before the Lord unto all the children of Is- 
rael ; and they looked, and took every man his 
rod." 

There was neither demur, nor appeal. Dead 
sticks were they all, save one ; and each man 
took his own dead thing and went away. 

But Aaron's rod, alive from the Lord, and 
consecrate to Him, was laid up again before 
the testimony, for a token ; that the people 
might no more murmur nor dispute, lest so 
doing they should die. For God is not will- 
ing that any man should perish, but that all 
should come to the knowledge of the truth. 
It is the truth that judge th them ; that saveth 
also, in the end. 

It is long before men learn that ; that the 
very judgment is salvation. The Israelites, 
smitten, scared, trembling, seeing the unwa- 
vering Justice in which they were held, cried 
still unto Moses, — 

" Behold, we die, we perish, we all perish. 



THE BUDDED ROD 303 

Whosoever cometh anything near unto the 
tabernacle of the Lord shall die : shall we be 
consumed with dying ? " 

The Budded Rod has told us its inner, true, 
lovely stor3\ Must we go back, — shutting 
our inward sense and vision of its truth, — and 
with our blind common sense argue the mate- 
rial side of it? To accept God's Why, must 
we always stipulate with Him that we shall 
compass his How ? Must we prove the process 
of his teaching by our own comprehension ? 
To comj)rehend, — to get all round a fact or 
act, — is an altogether different thing from 
understanding it. The very word understand 
implies an attitude of humble faith, a recep- 
tion from above ourselves, through signs be- 
yond our own powers. Yet undoubtedly we 
may satisfy our minds in this attitude, by some 
argument of rationality that shall meet the 
cavil which stops short in ignorant refusal ; 
and calls itself reason. We may go deeper 
into the infinite reason than the feeble investi- 
gation which stops at what seems to its first 
touch a hard surface of circumstance. 

Let us look at this happening, then, in the 
relation it holds to the faith of a great na- 



304 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

tioii, to tlie spiritual certainties of a great soul. 
For it is the Intuition of Reality, and Belief 
that comes of it, that we are searching for and 
tracing out. 

How came Moses and the Israelites to be- 
lieve this? 

Something happened, which shut the mur- 
muring lips of the disaffected chiefs. Some- 
thing beyond their cavil or dispute ; a thing 
to which they yielded instantly, as to a sign 
from heaven. And this recorded thing is not 
a piece of myth, or a fabrication invented in 
an after day, and loosely circulated in the 
world like other fable. It was a thing of 
which the token was kept sacredly, from the 
moment on ; the live tradition of which passed 
down from father to son, a part of a positive 
inheritance ; a trust in their hearts and hands 
as from the Most High. 

Some one has answered to the question, 
" Where is the proof of Christianity ? " " The 
Jews."" The Jews, to this day, prove Christ 
and the Bible. Scattered, but not perished, 
they endure, a separate people, to hold the 
Testimonies. They are themselves the living 
and authentic record of their Belief. 

And their Belief is more than they. It 



THE BUDDED ROD 305 

holds what they have not even yet confessed 
to, nor understood ; the central declaration 
of the Personal Christ, — the Divine-Human 
Presence, the Jehovah-Angel, who had been 
always with them, — and the fulfilling attes- 
tation of his Coming in the Flesh. By the 
witness of their Seers, God had already " set 
his king upon his holy hill of Zion," while 
Judah was yet a nation and a reahn ; and 
while yet her thousands filled the land, his 
open manifestation was to be. 

" The sce.'ptre shall not depart from Judah, 
nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until 
Shiloh come ; and unto him shall the gather- 
ing of the people be." 

" Thou, Bethlehem-Ephratah, though thou 
be little among the thousands of Judah^ yet 
out of thee shall he come forth mito me that 
is to be ruler in Israel ; whose goings forth 
have been from of old^from everlasting T 

But this something that truly happened 
as to Aaron's rod, — the memory and sign of 
which, yet vital and sacredly laid up among 
the Hebrew people, bear evidence of a con- 
vincing proof to them, — was it just what it 
seemed to be, or have the Jews believed, in 



306 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

this and in other matters, what nobody else can 
literally and rationally accept ? Was the Bud- 
ding of the Rod, perhaps, a piece of Oriental 
jugglery ? Was Moses a pious trickster ? 

What, then, was or is " Oriental jugglery" ? 
For that also survives, and is in the first place 
to be explained, before we sneer it — or any- 
thing we choose to class with it — away. Has 
wise, modern. Occidental literalism ever found 
out its secret, or determined its method ? 

There were magicians in Egypt in the time 
of Moses ; there were casters-out of devils in 
Israel in the time of Christ ; there are Indian 
wonder-workers in the East to-day. 

And what about it all ? Ah, here we are in 
the mystery at once. The Occult is in every- 
thing. Everything is occult. Men stumble 
against great secrets, and get from some un- 
known live wire a strong, sudden thrill ; from 
some hidden cause a marvelous result ; and 
then they go to work, and rightly, with slow, 
careful Science, to trace relation, to experiment, 
to compare, and by earnest, laborious process to 
demonstrate and declare law after law. Have 
they ever got the wJiole^ — the inclusive cen- 
tral Principle and Power? They come so 
near that we are awed, — half terrified ; we cry 



THE BUDDED ROD 307 

with the Israelites, " Whosoever cometh any- 
thing near unto the tabernacle of the Lord shall 
die I " And in our daring, our tampering with 
sense divorced from spirit, we are in danger 
of some terrible perishing. Our blindness, our 
peril, is just this : we catch the skirts of Mj^s- 
ter}^ but we do not see her outstretched hands. 
We do not let her lift us to herself, and make 
us one with her. The difference between jug- 
glery or magic, and miracle in God's name, 
is precisely here. Jesus Christ asserted it 
when he turned back the blasphemy of the 
Pharisees upon themselves, with the demand, 
" If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom 
do your sons cast them out ? " He recognized 
the fact that wonders were wrought, even by 
the very unknown Power of God, without any 
oneness with the Spirit of God. Is that the 
way we are iuA^enting and contriving now, and 
glorifying ourselves with our half knowledge, 
when the full flood of light and power only 
waits the confession of faith to be poured upon 
our uplifted and rejoicing humanity ? " But 
if /," Jesus Christ goes on, in an ineffable 
majesty of utterance, " icith the Finger of 
God cast out devils, no doubt the Kingdom of 
God is come upon you." 



308 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

Jugglery, Occultism, Science, — call it what 
you will, — touches Reality ; feels that it is, 
draws from it some partial signs, and thinks 
itself conquering and possessing the Unseen, 
the Unfathomable. Faith lays her hand rev- 
erently in the Hand of God, and by his per- 
mission and command takes power from Him 
and does his behest among the things of the 
earthly. Jesus Christ meant something when 
he said, "If ye have faith as a grain of mus- 
tard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain. Be 
thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, 
and it shall be done." But we have not come 
to it yet. We have not come to the faith — 
the might of the spirit — which is the condi- 
tion. Faith is not temerity, is not self-seek- 
ing, is not curious, idle intrusion and tempting, 
nor rash, wild, ignorant interference. It is not 
taking the kingdom of heaven by whim, nor 
by force. Is it yet upon the earth? When 
the Son of Man cometh, shall He find it await- 
ing him ? 

Had Moses a beginning of this faith and 
its power, or was he a cheat, and a presumer ? 
Must not his life be the answer ? And does 
it not simply offer us the alternative of be- 



THE BUDDED ROD 309 

lieving in a moral impossibility, or in an ex- 
ceptional natural phenomenon ? 

See how it was with this man in everything. 
From the hour when he learned the lesson of 
his leprous hand, which he drew forth as from 
the hiding and assumption of its new power 
in his own bosom, until at Kadesh, where we 
shall next see him, he stood on God's side and 
condemned himself for his momentary claim 
of self-authority, Moses was utterly, uncom- 
promisingly, to his most secret thought, sur- 
rendered to the divine ordinance ; drawing his 
very will, and the brave tenacity of it, from 
the "Thus shalt thou say," — " Thus shalt 
thou do," — of Jehovah. He, himself, was a 
Rod in the hand of the Lord. He undertook 
nothing, planned nothing, contrived no cun- 
ning expedient, of his own impulse, or shrewd- 
ness, or desire. He simply " fell down before 
the Lord," and took his command and empow- 
ering from Him. He believed in all he did, 
for he knew he did nothing from himself. In 
this again was he type of the Son, who " doeth 
that which he seeth the Father do," and " al- 
ways the thing that pleaseth Him ; " and whom 
therefore " the Father showeth all things that 
himself doeth." Of wh*om, by his prophet 
Isaiah, the Almighty One saith : — 



310 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

" There shall come forth a Rod out of the 
stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of 
his roots : and the Spirit of the Lord shall 
rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and under- 
standing, the spirit of counsel and might, the 
spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the 
Lord ; and shall make him of quick under- 
standing in the fear of the Lord ; and he shall 
not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither 
reprove after the hearing of his ears : but 
with righteousness shall he judge the poor, 
and reprove with equity for the meek of the 
earth : and he shall smite the earth with 
the rod of his mouth " (the power of his word 
shall move all things earthly), " and with the 
breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. 
And righteousness shall be the girdle of 
his loins " (the restraint and control of his 
strength),, "and faithfulness the girdle of 
his reins " (the binding of his desires). 

Is not this, indeed, the Christ, and the full 
sonship of humanity ; when its life and power 
shall be " laid up " as a rod " in the taberna- 
cle of the Lord," and shall be found bringing 
forth buds, and blooming blossoms, and yield- 
ing almonds? 



CHAPTER XVII 
the transgression at kadesh 

Thirst.. 

Terrible thirst came upon them again. 

The Forty Years were counted. Once more 
the Israelites were come up to the very borders 
of Canaan. There, at Kadesh, Miriam died, 
and was buried. 

Aaron and Moses, Caleb and Joshua, re- 
mained, the living leaders of the host, to bring 
it unto its great, glad inheritance. They of 
the past generation, who sinned, and strove, 
who reproached God and threatened his chosen 
ministers with stones, when at the first time 
they reached this wilderness-border, and stood 
almost within the boundary of the Promised 
Land, — who had been turned back into a 
prolonged desert-wandering for their unwor- 
thiness, — had perished gradually by the way, 
and a new people had grown up. Were they 
purged of their old faithlessness and rebellion ? 
Were they ready now to follow at the com- 



312 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

mands of the Lord, and enduring all hard- 
ship, resisting and conquering all foes, to 
march in to this beautiful southern Syria where 
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had dwelt, and 
retake it to themselves from the rude, sensual, 
pagan tribes who had been inhabiting it, to 
possess it in the name and in the service 
of the Living God, and make of it a Holy 
Land ? 

The pain of thirst came upon them, and 
they forgot and despised all. They cared not 
for the great grapes of Eshcol, which were so 
near if they could only bear a little longer ; 
for the wells and fountains that a short way 
further on in that south country between 
Beersheba and the Desert had been found 
springing forth, or had been digged, by Abra- 
ham and by Isaac, and that still poured forth 
their waters. They just stopped short, in 
their old, blind, obstinate way, and hankered 
back through all the forty years of teaching, 
promise, and probation, after the life of the 
tribes in Egypt, when their fathers had not 
been called forth from slavery and dull com- 
fort to the heroism and patience of faith, and 
the sure fulfillment of the covenant of God. 
They asked bitterly why they might not rather 



THE TRANSGRESSION AT KADESH 313 

have died in the wilderness, with their fathers 
and brethren, and ended their miseries as they 
did. Why had they come all this way further, 
to perish ? 

^' You have given us nothing-," they said to 
Moses ; but truly the word was spoken blas- 
phemously up to God. " Wherefore have ye 
made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us 
into this CA^il place ? It is no place of seed, 
or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates ; 
neither is there any water to drink. And 
Moses and Aaron went from the presence of 
the assembly unto the door of the tabernacle 
of the congregation, and they fell upon their 
faces ; and the glory of the Lord appeared 
unto them." 

The Lord was patient. He was long suf- 
fering with their discontents and their short- 
sightedness ; with their mistaken despair, and 
their reproach of his goodness. 

The same Lord, who in this Land of His 
spake afterward by his Son, — "If any man 
thirst, let him come unto me and drink," — 
who even visited them with brief bodily need 
to follow it with bodily satisfying, and so 
show them the perfect type of spiritual fam- 
ishing and refreshment, — '- said now unto 



314 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

Moses, — " Take the rod." " Lay hold of 
My Power." " Gather the assembly together. 
Speak to the rock before their eyes. It shall 
give forth his water. Thou shalt bring forth 
to them water out of the rock. So shalt 
thou give the congregation and their beasts 
drink." 

It was as if He had said, " Behind my hard 
refusal is the waiting, living good. Believe, 
challenge it, and call it forth. It shall come 
to you abundantly." 

" And Moses took the rod from before the 
Lord, as the Lord commanded." 

But in the impetuousness of his indignation, 
in a swift, fierce impatience of the unman- 
ageable temper and stolidity of his people, he 
could not graciously work God's graciousness 
for them. If God was not angry with them, 
he was. He took to himself, in the moment 
of roused displeasure, — of resentment that 
stirs in the very doing of undeserved good, 
and embitters it, — the offense, and the out- 
raged beneficence of power. 

" Hear now, ye rebels ! " he shouted, as he 
lifted up the rod before them. " Must we 
fetch you water out of the rock ? " And 
twice, with vehemence, exaggerating and tran- 



THE TRANSGRESSION AT KADESH 315 

scending the act commanded, lie smote the 
face of the cliff before which they stood. 

The beautiful, hidden water gushed forth ; 
the people drank, and the beasts ; they were 
once more glad and thankful. 

But Moses, deep in his true heart, heard 
the rebuking voice of the Lord : 

" Thou hast sinned. Thou hast not sancti- 
fied Me, in the eyes of the children of Israel. 
Thou shalt not take this people into the land 
which I have given them." 

That wdiich maketh manifest is Light. Be- 
cause the Light was in the soul of Moses, his 
own quick condemnation came. " The Word 
that I have spoken unto them, the same shall 
judge them in that day," saith the Lord. 

" This is the water of Meribah " (of striv- 
ing), God spoke with his own Thought into the 
thought of Moses. " The children of Israel 
strove here with the Lord, and He was sancti- 
fied in them." 

It was a question between the people and 
their God ; it was not between the congrega- 
tion and Moses. God's mercy and his gift 
settled it. " He was sanctified in them." He 
stooped to their ignorance ; he forbore with 
their insolence. He showed them once more 



316 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

that He was God. " I will be glorified in the 
midst of thee ; and they shall know that I am 
God." ..." I had pity for mine holy name, 
which the house of Israel had profaned." . . . 
'•'• When I have brought them again . . . and 
gathered them . . . and am sanctified in them 
in the sight of many nations ; then shall they 
hnoio that 1 am the Lord their God^ which 
caused them to be led into captivity among the 
heathen : but I have gathered them unto their 
own land, and have left none of them any 
more there." 

" I will sanctify my great name, and the 
heathen shall know that I am the Lord, when I 
shall be sanctified in you before their eyes. . . . 

" Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, 
and ye shall be clean ; from all your filthiness, 
and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. 
A new heart also will I give you, and a new 
spirit will I put within you . . . and I will 
put my spirit within you, and cause you to 
walk in my statutes, . . . and ye shall dwell 
in the land that I gave to your fathers ; and 
ye shall be my people, and I will be your God." 

That is the writing of the prophet Ezekiel 
in the Name of the Lord : its whole burden 
and motive is, "I will deal with my people, 



THE TRANSGRESSION AT KADESH 317 

both in judgment and mercy, .so that they may 
Icnoio that it is 7, a7id that I am the Lord 
their God^ 

The Revelation of himself in all their life ; 
his abiding with them, his providing for them, 
his ruling of them ; these are his age-long- 
lessons to his people ; this is the history of 
God with man in the earth. That they may 
come to the eternal life, which is the knowing 
me, their God : that the " Will may be done 
on earth as it is in heaven. This is the sanc- 
tification, and redemption; this is the "new 
heaven and the new earth " that we are to 
look for; the making of which is the "long- 
suffering of the Lord," that we " account sal- 
vation." 

And as by the flash of truth in a single 
word, Moses knew all this, and was humble 
in the sight of God. He was one with God 
in his rebuke, and rebuked and humbled him- 
self. " I shall not lead this people in ; it is 
not his will ; I am not worthy." In a full 
acceptance of his sentence, he submitted ; no 
whit changed or shaken in his faith ; no hair's 
breadth wavering in his loyalty and service. 
" I will lead them to the Land ; but I shall not 
go over into this Canaan." 



318 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

Was this condemnation? Was it penalty, 
— an angry punishment ? Was it not rather 
a closer divine fellowship, a more absolute 
belonging to the Most High ? Was Moses 
not altogether at one with the Lord, even 
against the fault in himself that he would, 
with all his heart, the Lord should destroy ? 

He might not enter the land on earth that 
was to be divided to the tribes : he might not, 
after all, have part or lot in it : whether or 
not, was not his certainty strong that he should 
yet enter the Canaan of God ? And would 
the story of Moses have been complete, — 
would the Faith of Moses have been utterly 
proved, — had not this last test, this last re- 
nunciation of self and acceptance of God's 
thorough work and will with him been per- 
mitted to his true, unswerving spirit ? 

Moses believed as we ought to believe. 
That it is not God's will to hurt for the sake 
of hurting, or of taking vengeance ; but rather 
it is his love which will not stop short of 
hurting, if by hurting He can heal ; it is 
his avenging of us -against our evils, and not 
his own avenging against ourselves, when He 
chastises. His rebuke is our conviction of 
his truth ; it is our bringing - back to his 



THE TRANSGRESSION AT KADESH 319 

righteousness. '' There is no longer any con- 
demnation to them who are in Christ ; " who 
are in the relation of children to the Father ; 
who submit, and acknowledge, and accept ; 
who confess and forsake, and rejoice in the 
faithfulness and justice that will " cleanse from 
all unrio'hteousness." 

o 

The moment a soul takes this attitude, it is 
redeemed ; the sin is no more in it ; it has laid 
hold of the divine equity, and " iniquity has 
no more dominion over it." It is " not under 
the law, but under grace." The very chas- 
tisement is grace. There is a tenderer un- 
derstanding between the spirit chiding itself 
through an inmost apprehension of the chid- 
ing of the Lord, and the Lord of that spirit, 
than any mere partial orderliness of life, 
which seems blameless, can bring. There is 
greater joy over the sinner who repents, than 
over the ninety and nine who know not that 
they need repentance. There is a more ex- 
alted beatitude in the sweet denial that is 
borne from a Love that denies Itself in the 
withholding, and bears penalty with the peni- 
tent, than in the easy permission of our own 
way, that would never open to us the deep 
experience of God's most intimate dealing, 



320 EVENTS OF THE EXODUS 

the beautiful force of liis most stringent lead- 
ing. 

Transgression, — Repentance, — Reconcile- 
ment: in the mystery of God's plan for his 
souls upon this earth, these three things have 
to be ; through them only do we come to the 
knowledge of what is in his heart for us, and 
of how in his very heart we are held, and 
live. 

To be fully Prophet of Israel, Moses must 
needs know these ; must fail, must judge him- 
self with God's judgment, consent to the right- 
eous consequence of his misdoing, and with 
his contrition and consent be swept into the 
very bosom of Almighty sympathy, identified 
with the accusing holiness. For " who is he 
that condemneth " in us, but the " Christ who 
died, nay rather who is risen again, who is 
even at the right hand of God, who also mak- 
eth intercession for us ? " 

At Horeb, Moses had been called to be 
Seer ; at Sinai to be Lawgiver ; at Kadesh, 
he entered into the supreme experience that 
makes a man the redeemed son of God. 

Between Moses and Jesus of Nazareth, this 
was the difference. This is the essential prov- 
ing of the transcendent nature of the Christ. 



THE TRANSGRESSION AT KADESH 321 

Made flesh for us, — partaking of our human- 
ity, — sharing its pain, — He yet " knew no 
sin," therefore no repentance. His suffering 
for sin was on the God-side, — as God suffers. 
He bore our iniquities as God bears. He was 
not redeemed, but Redeemer ; He was not for- 
given, but Forgiver. He entered into death 
with us, that we might enter into life with 
Him. 



PART V 

LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 



CHAPTER I 



THE SERPENTS OF FIRE, AND THE SERPENT 
OF BRASS 

In the latter days of any period, the action 
of its history accelerates, intensifies;, events 
crowd ; significances deepen. We look for 
some near, great end, instinctively, when 
things so happen. We recognized the em- 
phatic " signs of the times." 

We are told, in tremendous figures, how this 
shall be in the latter days that are to come 
upon the present earth ; on the brink of the 
great Entering In of the Race to its final in- 
heritance. 

So with the Israelites in the last days of 
their Wandering, in their yet prolonged pil- 
grimage around the desolate ridges of Seir, it 
was as if the things they had yet to learn, — 
the interpretations that must yet be given, — 



324 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

the experiences needful to complete to them 
lesson and warning, and to show them their 
help and remedy, — followed in very rapid 
sequence, and with augmenting weight of im- 
port. 

We come to one of these — whose type 
touches the very quick of human penalty and 
pain, and reaches over into the very Gospel of 
a deliverance yet to be wrought out — shortly 
after the departure from Kadesh, and the death 
and burial of Aaron at Mount Hor. 

Once more the contumacy of the people was 
conquered, and their critical need was met, 
by a manifestation of direct power from God, 
made through a command to his minister ; a 
doing and happening the legend and memorial 
of which, as that of Aaron's Rod, continued as 
history and sign in the Hebrew nation down 
through the generations, until all signs and 
events of the Old Testimony were confirmed 
and fulfilled, in an interior and supreme signi- 
ficance, by the New. 

Edom had refused to give Israel passage 
through his border. The whole host, therefore, 
had moved again southward, coming to Mount 
Hor. There Aaron had died, in the moun- 



SERPENTS OF FIRE AND BRASS 325 

tain ; Eleazar, his son, had been solemnly in- 
vested with his office ; and the people had 
mourned for Aaron thirty days. 

Then King- Arad, the Canaanite of the south, 
had come upon them, and Israel, praying and 
fighting, " vowing a vow unto the Lord," had 
conquered, and destroyed the Canaanitish 
cities at Hormah. 

After that, journeying on "by the way of 
the Red Sea, to compass the land of Edom," — 
their march directed to the head of the Gulf 
of Akabah, the eastern Red Sea arm, where 
they would bend again northward, around and 
beyond the mountains of Edom, — " the soul 
of the people was much discouraged because 
of the way." And again their discouragement 
found its invariable vent in speaking " against 
God and against Moses." 

" Wherefore have ye brought us up out of 
Egypt to die in the wilderness ? For there is 
no bread, neither is there any water ; and our 
soul loatheth this light bread." 

" And the Lord sent fiery serpents among 
the people, and they bit the people ; and much 
people of Israel died." 

They were bitten of evil and poisonous crea- 
tures : their own ingratitude and obstinacy 



326 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

and unbelief came back upon tbem in the visi- 
tation of mean, creeping, stinging, deadly crea- 
tures of the ground ; as they had assailed and 
wounded with bitterness and burning reproach, 
they were themselves assailed and wounded ; 
in their bodies they realized what the sin of 
their spirit and speech had been. They were 
made to feel what they could feel ; that they 
might learn the wrong of their wrong-doing, 
the just disj^leasure of their God, and beyond 
that, his long-suffering patience, his help and 
healing. 

This is what the memory and the legend 
must have conveyed, as it passed on from lip 
to lip, from thought to thought, and men grew 
to some beginning of understanding of what the 
way of the Almighty had been with them. It 
is only put down in the Record as bare fact ; 
but it was fact Avhich had living truth in it, 
and by the living truth was opened up at last. 

" Therefore the people came to Moses, and 
said, We have sinned, for we have spoken 
against the Lord and against thee ; pray unto 
the Lord, that he take away the serpents from 
us. 

" And Moses prayed for the people." 



SERPENTS OF FIRE AND BRASS 327 

Take away the serpents. It was the true 
prayer, if only it reached inwardly enough. 
Take away the discontent, the repining, the 
reviling, out of our hearts. 

Did Israel pray this? Doubtless Moses 
prayed it for them. Doubtless, deep in his 
soul, he longed and besought in their behalf 
the availing deliverance ; that they might be 
turned from their own groveling and sensual 
desires, that could only sting their peace ; that 
were of the ground, and ate the dust of the 
ground ; that, stealthy and sinuous, haunted 
their unwilling feet in the desert pathway, 
and smote them unawares through their own 
feebleness. Strength in the Lord would have 
enabled them to crush their enemies' heads ; 
long afterward it was said of the faithful, and 
promised to them who should go forth in the 
name of God and his truth, " They shall take 
up serpents ; they shall cast out devils ; if 
they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt 
them." 

Doubtless this truth was in the soul of 
Moses ; and from it his inspiration came. The 
truth in any man is a hold upon all truth, 
upon all righteous and beautiful law in the 
universe, of spirit and of things ; it discerns 



328 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

the unknown by a divine instinct ; it grasps 
help and remedy not yet demonstrated; it 
goes beyond and anticipates the slowness of 
science ; and hence comes miracle, — the show- 
ing beforehand of what in the Day coming 
shall be the common and the everyday. 

" How shall I lift this people up from the 
ground?" the prophet questions with anxious 
wrestling in himself. " How shall I make 
them look up, and not down f " The wisdom 
of that aphorism is as old as Moses. 

" It is in their low life of sense that they 
fall, and are hurt ; how can I make them see 
the higher, that they may abide in it, and be 
safe ? " 

In our day, they are coming back to this 
same quest, inventing " Christian Science ; " 
making a theory and a new departure out of 
an age-long principle ; discovering what has 
been told and shown from the beginning ; 
separating, as the manner of a limited truth- 
seeking is, one great verity from its harmony 
and co-working with all verities, and denying 
and asserting in its name, on the one hand 
all natural and appointed human experience in 
the flesh, and on the other a human supremacy 
from which the flesh — even the flesh in which 



SERPENTS OF FIRE AND BRASS 329 

Christ himself suffered — must, for a time, 
hinder us. 

The thought of Moses sprang forward, up- 
ward, touched with a heavenly foreknowledge. 
" They must see the serpent itself lifted up ! " 
was the word that flashed into his conscious- 
ness. 

There are two serpents : the serpent of the 
dust, and the serpent of the heavenly light. 
There are two knowledges : the knowledge of 
sense, and the knowledge of the spirit. In the 
one, man is hurt, and dies ; in the other, he 
is healed, and lives again. 

" Make thee " (for a sign) — came the or- 
daining perception, taking form and plan with 
him, as every spiritual teaching did — "a 
fiery serpent ; " a glowing, shining image ; 
" and set it upon a banner-staff ; it shall come 
to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he 
looketh upon it, shall live." 

Not only should the poisonous serpents be 
taken away, but the flesh that had been bit- 
ten and poisoned should be healed. Not only 
should sin be removed, but the poison it had 
left in life should be withdrawn also. The 
forgiveness of the Lord is, in the end, an 
absolute remission. " I will heal their back- 



330 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

slidings ; I will love them freely ; I will for- 
give their iniquity, and I will remember their 
sin no more." 

" Whether is easier," saith the Son of Man, 
" to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, 
Arise, and walk ? But that ye may know that 
the Son of Man hath power on earth^^'' — even 
in the earthly condition and against the earthly 
retribution — " to forgive sin. Arise, take up 
thy bed," — that on which thou liest helpless 
through thine own unwisdom and misdoing, 

— " and go unto thine house." Keturn where 
thou wast meant to abide. 

"Who is a God like unto thee, that pardon- 
eth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression 
of the remnant of his lieritage^^ — the rem- 
nant in his children, — in every child of his, 

— that is true, that is savable, that is still of 
himself ? 

" He will turn again, he will have compas- 
sion on us ; he will subdue our iniquities ; and 
thou wilt cast all our sins into the depths of 
the sea." 

Which promise and confidence the Christ 
also redeemed and confirmed with a verity, by 
direct and visible act. " Go," he commanded 
the evil spirits that infested the maniacs ; and 



SERPENTS OF FIRE AND BRASS 331 

as in their frenzy they had besought permis- 
sion of him, "they went into the herd of 
swine ; " they took to themselves their own 
low nature and affinity in the unclean, pro- 
hibited beasts ; " and behold, the whole herd 
of swine ran violently down a steep place into 
the sea, and perished in the waters." 

Before the eyes of the multitude, and for a 
heavenly assurance, it was done ; the divine 
remission was dramatized ; the evils were re- 
manded to their proper habitat, and with that 
which they could wholly defile, were utterly 
destroyed. 

For the devils have nothing to do with man, 
the element of the Divine in the human being ; 
they belong to, and can j)ossess only, the de- 
basable sense -nature which is nevertheless 
given to the man clean, to be ruled and kept 
from debasement, and so sanctified and lifted 
up to God. In the last event, the 7nan shall 
be saved ; the devils and their work must 
perish from the man, even though they should 
leave no individual life-consciousness behind, 
but God should have to resume his own dis- 
honored essence, and do with it as He will. 

Looking back from the New Testament, we 
read the signs of the Old in the light of their 



332 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

spiritual fulfillment. It was they who could 
reach forward and inward, could forefeel and 
insee the coming Gospel, who prophesied it 
in word and deed, beyond even their own en- 
tire interpreting. The Redemption of Christ 
was in the heart and hope of Moses, when he 
lifted up the shining Serpent, a celestial omen, 
in the wilderness. Even so the Son of Man 
— the holy, healing Power and Wisdom — 
should be "' lifted up ; that whosoever believeth 
in him should not perish, but have eternal 
life." " Look unto Me and be ye saved, all 
the ends of the earth," saith both parable and 
Scripture. 

We have our Lord's own word that his 
Father meant the sign. In all God's creation 
and providence there is nothing without a 
meaning. And the Meaning and the Will are 
the essential force that makes unity of law 
and demonstration in things visible and invis- 
ible ; compelling even remotest outward issues 
in their sure accordance. 

Moses believed when he fashioned the image 
of pure, enduring metal, — the " fine copper, 
precious as gold," — and raised it up in the 
sun, so that its brightness smote like live flame 
upon the vision of the people. The people, 



SERPENTS OF FIRE AND BRASS 333 

through him, believed, — so far as their need 
and perception went at the moment ; and ac- 
cording to their faith it was done unto them. 

Is there anything here to stumble at ? 

Do we stumble to-day at wonders as great, 
except that we think we have learned some- 
thing of the wherefore and the conditions, and 
how to apply and connect them ? Do we 
scoif at the power that runs along the lines of 
trolley and telephone, by which we are trans- 
ported from place to place, and talk across 
distances which distinguishable sound cannot, 
without the new medium, traverse ? 

But suppose that sometime, through cata- 
clysmal changes, depopulations, relapses from 
civilization, breakings-up of interchange and 
understandings, destruction of records, these 
knowledges and appliances should be lost ; 
and that only in a few surviving chronicles 
of a dim elder time should some brief, unex- 
plained statement be handed down to a far 
posterity, — where would be the faith on the 
earth to believe that once men traveled by 
an invisible force, and sent words around the 
world on hanging or on buried wires ? We 
are living in miracle all the time ; we are 
getting to take it very coolly and of course. 



334 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

We do not even stagger at mind - healing, 
faith-cure, thought-transference, hypnotic con- 
trol; only we do not any longer call these 
things miracle. Moses, with his brazen ser- 
pent, acted in advance of what we more or less 
accept in modern discovery. Who knows if 
we are not working backward, after all, toward 
the simplest truth, the most direct potency ? 
In our more complicated life and motive, 
there is more of illusion and scheming insin- 
cerity to disentangle from our facts, than 
there was in the facts and the time of the 
Exodus. If the day of miracle is over, it is 
so to our vitiated apprehension, that will not 
recognize any work above our own, or that 
which we might do on the lines of accounted 
cause, if we could but have the handling. We 
think we understand so much, that we refuse 
to wonder. But God quietly works on his 
marvels, and every happening is a word, and 
every showing a sign, of which we fail to get 
the spiritual utterance and correspondence. 
Down the centuries, with an echo from the 
mystical Past and a trumpet ring into the 
unsounded Future, comes the Voice, — "I 
have told you earthly things, and ye believed 
not : how shall ye believe if I tell you 



SERPENTS OF FIRE AND BRASS 385 

heavenly things ? " Ye have discharged faith 
from your practical life ; how shall I lift you 
up into the everlasting meanings ? 

Laid up in every one of these old stories 
of a past and simple time, is the essential 
application to all human experience, the vital 
prophecy of inherent law. It is what they 
have been made into story for. From the 
Garden of Eden to the Fall of Jerusalem, a 
great allegory is written out in a history that 
is not only one of a race, but of the Race of 
the races. And forever it repeats the same, 
in form after form. 

There are the two wisdoms : the low and 
the high ; that which creeps, and that which 
is raised up in light. When man, bitten with 
the poison of the sensual serpent, craves only 
the one and turns away from the other, God 
says, in his lovingkindness, " That way is 
death to men. I will not let them reach on 
through earthly knowledge, to an earthly tree 
of life, and stay in sense forever. They must 
die in the flesh, that they may be born in the 
Spirit. The life of the flesh shall be short- 
ened. I will hem them round, to deliver 
them. Their knowledges also shall be bound. 
Every now and then they shall be destroyed. 



336 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

They shall hold in themselves the elements 
of destruction. There shall be periods, and 
periods. Men shall learn, and lose. They 
shall discover, and forget, and begin again. It 
shall be, Thus far and no farther, till they turn 
to Me with all their hearts ; till they look up 
to Me, who am showing them my truth, and 
believe my heavenly things that I am telling 
them by my earthly. For the heavenly is in 
the earthly, and the earthly by the heavenly." 

And God will have his way. 

At last the angel shall stand " with one foot 
on the sea," — the ungraspable, the image of 
the intangible, the spiritual, — " and one upon 
the land," — the positive, solid, material, 
earthly ; and shall " lift up his hand to 
heaven, and swear by Him that liveth forever, 
who created heaven and the things that there- 
in are, and the earth and the things that 
therein are, and the sea, and the things which 
are therein, that there shall be time " — limit 
and incompleteness — " no longer ; but that 
the mystery of God shall he finished^ as He 
hath declared to his servants the 'prophets.^'' 

" There is nothing covered that shall not 
be revealed ; neither hid, that shall not be 
known." 



SERPENTS OF FIRE AND BRASS 337 

" What I do thou knowest not now ; but 
thou shalt know hereafter." 

The works of God are speech and language ; 
his meanings wait ; but all is sign, miracle ; 
in all a revelation hides itself. In all there is 
harmony, order, concurrence. The outward 
could never be but for the inward ; the in- 
ward cannot fail of expression through the 
outward. 

We shall believe the thing, when we find 
the thought that was within it. Christ him- 
self explained the Brazen Serpent; He will 
open all Scripture to us when He comes in the 
Spirit, as He did on the Easter Night when 
He walked with his friends on the road to 
Emmaus. He only is " worthy to open " the 
seven-sealed Book, " written icithin and upon 
the hack side,'" " and to loose the seals there- 
of." 

" The Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root 
of David," — He who in himself joined the 
Divine with the human, the essential Word 
of God with the scriptured creation, — " hath 
prevailed." " The Lamb as it had been 
slain," — the Eternal Life that had tasted 
death, — having the " seven horns " of power, 
and the " seven e3"es " that see all that the 



338 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

Father doeth, — whose vision and strength 
are those of " the Seven Spirits of God sent 
forth into all the earth," building his Great 
Parable, — " He came and took the book out 
of the right hand of Him that sat upon the 
throne." 

" And if any man will do his will, he shall 
know of the doctrine." 



CHAPTER II 

THE STORY OF BALAAM 

Alongside of, and interwoven with the 
story of Moses, the whole, single-hearted Pro- 
phet of the Lord, we find, toward the close of 
the record, that of the half, double-hearted 
prophet Balaam ; a man of the Midianites, 
visited by the Spirit of God, "having his eyes 
open " to the vision of the true, having his ears 
opened to the inward speech of the Almighty. 
In this he was as Moses in Israel ; he was, 
in the ideal apprehension of the One Living- 
God, as Abraham among the Chaldeans. But 
there was in him an alternation and mingling 
of heathenism with faith ; of common enchant- 
ments with inmost illumination ; there was in 
his purpose and act a vacillation and contra- 
diction between his low Midianitish nature and 
its affiliations, and his recognition of the holy 
authority of the Supreme. Counsel came to 
him from on high ; but it was met by earthly 
consideration which temporized with and per- 



340 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

verted it. Errand was given him to do, and 
message to say ; he dared not refuse ; the 
power of the truth compelled him ; and yet, 
after his reluctant acknowledgment and forced 
obedience, he neutralized and profaned his 
mission by counsel of his own with the chiefs 
of his people, to the seduction of the Israelites 
into sin that brought down upon them again 
the anger and the smiting of their God. 

It is a strange history ; it comes to us as an 
antithesis to the pure, loyal seeking and ser- 
vice of Moses ; made a part, by its connection 
of incident and consequence, of the narrative 
of those, it is set over against them in a sharp 
contrast which of itself, without any pointing 
comment, defines the everlasting difference, 
in essence and result, between the entire ren- 
dering up of self to the Lord, and the pro- 
faning of the Divine by the intrusion and ad- 
mixture of self -motive and time-serving with 
the high, direct instincts of the heaven-visited 
soul. 

" Ye cannot serve God and Mammon " is 
written between the lines in blazing charac- 
ters all through the literal, brief text of the 
account. Whether directly from the pen of 
Moses, and in his words or not, it is a part of 



THE STORY OF BALAAM 341 

the history of Moses, and an illnstration by 
contradistinction of the great, thorough, un- 
compromising Belief of the man called also 
out of Midian by the Manifested Presence 
and personal command which became to him 
thenceforth the central reality and the unques- 
tioned leading of his life. 

If Moses had but halfway received and fol- 
lowed, he might have been as Balaam ; there- 
fore the story of Balaam concerns us inti- 
mately in our study of the Faith out of which 
unfolded the work of the Exodus, and the 
destiny of the most distinctively representative 
people of the earth. 

It also interests us, incidentally, because in 
it appears one of those forms of circumstantial 
assertion over which circumstantial judgment 
has stumbled ; has made mucli of as a stum- 
bling-block, and seized eagerly as excuse for 
discarding all trust in Biblical authenticity ; 
but which, looked at in the interior light of 
witness, becomes yet one more evidence of 
the central grasp of Scripture utterance, upon 
that which transcends utterance, and can only 
be expressed by vehicle of figure. The figure 
is simply so close, so true, that we hardly 
know — and need hardly trouble to know — 



342 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

whether fact of outward occurrence figured 
it to them wlio needed outward occurrence to 
learn by, or was represented in parable to con- 
vey a living truth of parable. 

Suppose we read straight through, by inner 
light, — by the X-ray which pierces shell of 
outer substance, — the recital of what hap- 
pened in and to this " Balaam," (pilgrim or 
lord of the peoiDle), "son of Beor," "brought 
from Aram" (the high exalted place) " out of 
the mountains of the East." 

The children of Israel, after their first bor- 
der battles in which they conquered Sihon 
king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan, 
set forward through their lands, and j)itched 
in the plains of Moab by Jordan- Jericho. 

And " Moab was sore afraid," and was 
distressed because of the children of Israel. 
" And it was said among the elders of Midian, 
This company will lick up all round about 
us, as the ox licketh up the grass of the field." 
And Balak, the king of Moab, sent, in his 
fear and distress, to him who was known as a 
prophet, Balaam, dwelling at Pethor, near the 
Euphrates, to come and curse the invaders : 
" for," he says in his message, " I wot that he 
whom thou blessest is blessed, and he whom 



THE STORY OF BALAAM 343 

thou cursest is cursed." And the elders, carry- 
ing the price of divination in their hands, and 
the words of the message of the king on their 
lips, went the long desert way and found Ba- 
laam. 

Now, remembering how it was when Moses 
sought the Lord, inquiring of Him, and how 
his implicit sincerity received the word and his 
unswerving action followed, observe and com- 
pare Balaam's invoking of the prophetic inspi- 
ration which he undoubtedly believed in and 
received, and the quality of his obedience to 
the heavenly vision. 

"Lodge here this night," he says to the 
messengers of the king. " I will bring you 
word again, as the Lord shall speak to me." 

And in the night-time Balaam turned his 
thought and asking to the presence of God, 
and opened his heart before Him. And God, 
searching his heart, found there more than it 
understood of itself, and made the demand of 
him which set him to face and declare, straight 
to the point, its workings. " What men are 
these with thee ? " With what concern of 
men come you before your God ? 

"They are the messengers of Balak, king 
of Moab, who hath sent word to me, A people 



344 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

is come out of Egypt, and covereth the face 
of the earth ; curse them for me, and perad- 
venture I may overcome them and drive them 
out." 

Instantly, in the clear presenting of the 
thing before the Lord, the speciousness and 
half - covered persuasion of his doubt melted 
and scattered from his mind as a thin mist 
before a strong sun-ray, and the plain word 
sounded through his consciousness : " Thou 
shalt not go with them ; thou shalt not curse 
the people ; for they are blessed." 

Blessing and cursing are of the Lord, and 
his righteousness ; they are not to be traded 
with ; they are not to be asked for of man by 
men, and a price offered. Balaam was prophet 
enough, truly, to discern this utterance of the 
Spirit of the Lord ; to have it take immediate, 
vital hold of him. For the time, it possessed 
and ruled him ; in the strength and compul- 
sion of it he rose up in the morning, and said 
to the princes of Balak, " Get you into your 
land : for the Lord refuseth to give me leave 
to go with you." And so they went away. 

But King Balak had not done with him. 
Another company of princes, more in number 
and more honorable, came to Pethor, and 



THE STORY OF BALAAM 345 

spoke to Balaam yet more urgently. They 
promised him, as the Tempter promised Jesus 
in the wilderness, " very great honor," and to 
do for him whatsoever he should say ; if he 
would only — using the power from God for 
his own will — ''curse for them this people." 

And Balaam answered, out of the noble, 
loyal God's-lieart of him, "If Balak would 
give me his house full of silver and gold, I 
cannot go beyond the word of ray God, to do 
less or more." And then, out of the little, 
human, hesitating, covetous heart of himself, 
he added, with a hope of escape, of compro- 
mise even with the Almighty in the matter, 
" Tarry ye here, I pray you, this night also, 
that I may know what the Lord may say unto 
me more." 

Self-persuaded, he lay down to quiet and 
soul-question. Self-persuaded, he let a voice 
speak to him, and called it the voice of the 
Lord. 

" If the men come to call thee, rise up and 
go with them ; but yet the word which I shall 
say unto thee, that shalt thou do." 

He would put himself into the midst of 
temptation. He would go with it a little way. 
And then he would hearken — through the 



346 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

confusing tumult of men's urging and his own 
desires — for what God would say. 

He would not listen for it now, wholly and 
finally, while he was alone with God. He 
would drift with circumstance, and let circum- 
stance decide him. When ever did a man 
do that, and not be led by circumstance into 
sin? 

He rose up in the morning, relieved by his 
postponed, left-open decision, and saddled his 
beast, and went with the princes of Moab. 

"And God's anger was kindled against him 
because he went." 

Does not this statement of itself show clearly 
that the vision of the night and the so-called 
voice of the Lord in it, were not true vision 
and a certain word, but wrested to the man's 
own wish and motive? Can we otherwise 
interpret and reconcile the sequent declara- 
tions ? 

God's anger — which is his opposing love, 
— was kindled ; and his angel " stood in the 
way " of Balaam, " for an adversary against 
him." 

" He was riding upon his ass ; " a mere 
stolid, stupid beast of burden. And yet the 
Lord used the ass to prevent the prophet. 



THE STORY OF BALAAM 347 

" The ass saw the Angel of the Lord stand- 
ing in the way." She felt a supreme compul- 
sion, and a fear, as of a sword drawn against 
her. " And she turned aside out of the way, 
and went into the field." 

Balaam had committed his cause to circum- 
stance, and here was circumstance. The Lord 
had not left him yet. He " prevents and fol- 
lows ; " if w^e will have circumstance to rule 
us, He will meet us with it. He will shut us 
in on every side. Nevertheless, if we will 
persist against everything. He leaves us our 
freewill. If we treat his defense as obstacle. 
He will sometimes let us beat it down. 

Balaam smote the ass, — God's circumstance, 
— to turn her into his own way. But the crea- 
ture presently was between two walls, " in a 
path of the vineyards," and again the angel of 
the Lord stood there ; again the fear and the 
compulsion seized her. She thrust herself, 
terrified, against the wall, pressing obstinately 
in resistance to her master's urging ; and Ba- 
laam's foot was crushed. 

Now there are especial promises, in figure, 
through the Bible, for the guiding and defense 
of the foot of man, if set in God's tvay. 
" The steps of a good man are ordered by the 



348 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

Lord." " I will give mine angel charge over 
thee, that thou dash not thy foot against a 
stone." 

Balaam was out of the way, and out of 
charge. Or rather the angel had now, of ne- 
cessity, a different charge concerning him. His 
foot was crushed ; his going disabled. For 
all that, he still struggled against rebuke and 
hindrance, and again he smote the ass, and 
forced her forward. But they came to " a nar- 
row place, where there was no way to turn, to 
the right hand nor to the left." And there was 
the angel of the Lord again, leaving the man 
alone, but working through the terrors of a 
beast. And the ass fell down upon her rider. 
The very means of jDrogress utterly failed. He 
was lamed, and the ass would no longer bear 
or obey him. All his intents were crossed, his 
powers defeated. 

And yet he would not understand, nor sub- 
mit. The voice of God had been silenced in 
his soul, and he could not even see His sign. 
He only struggled the harder with his thwart- 
ing circumstance. He smote the poor ass yet 
more severely. 

And then a cry broke forth from the animal, 
such as spoke like syllabled words to the con- 



THE STOkY OF BALAAM 849 

sciousness of her master. Whether in speech 
asinine or human, this is what she said, and 
what Balaam understood. " What have I 
done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me 
three times ? " 

Did never animal, before nor since, cry out 
with such appeal as that, from the cruelty to 
the love and debt of its owner and tormentor ? 
Was never human spirit touched, before • nor 
since, by such an utterance, either to fresh 
brutality of rage, or a sudden pity and re- 
morse ? 

Balaam was not subdued, but incensed. 
The stubborn beast had gotten too much the 
better of him. " Thou hast mocked me ! " he 
shouted. " If I had a sword in my hand, I 
would kill thee ! " And so he would. 

The poor ass moaned forth another remon- 
strance. " Did I ever do so before ? Could 
I help it to-day ? " And Balaam's heart re- 
turned to him, as the question pierced it to its 
true feeling. 

" Nay," he acknowledged. " Until now 
thou hast been faithful. Perhaps, now also, 
it is faithfulness." 

Then, at the first honest repentance, the 
first tenderness of a true conscience, the Lord 



350 LAST DAYS OF TIJE WANDERINGS 

drew his servant toward himself again, and 
" opened his eyes." 

And Balaam saw in his hindrance the angel 
of the Lord ; and that the sword was not in 
his own hand, to slay the instrument, but in 
the hand of the angel, to prevail against his 
sin. " And he bowed down his head, and fell 
flat upon his face." 

Balaam also, after all, was a Believer. " I 
have sinned," he said to the Presence that 
made itself known to him. " I knew not that 
thou stoodest in the way against me. Now, 
therefore, if it displease thee, I will get me 
back again." 

Now, there was no need to go back. Now, 
with his changed and restored purpose, he 
might go forward, in the fear and service of 
the Lord. 

" Go with the men," said the angel ; " but 
speak only the word that I shall speak unto 
thee." 

" So Balaam went with the princes of Ba- 
lak." 

And to Balak the king, he said, " I am 
come unto thee : have I any power at all to 
say anything? The word that God putteth 
into my mouth, that shall I speak." 



THE STORY OF BALAAM 351 

And Balak took him into the high places of 
Baal. And then the prophet conformed him- 
self to the customs of the heathen by a sacri- 
fice ; but he made the sacrifice after the ordi- 
nance of Israel, and in his heart he offered not 
unto Baal, but unto God. 

And then he left Balak standing by the 
burnt sacrifice, and " went to an high place," 
alone, to meet the Lord. 

" And the Lord put a word into his mouth," 
and he came back, and blessed Israel. " For 
how shall I curse whom God hath not cursed ? " 
he said. *' Who can count the dust of Jacob 
or the number of the fourth part of Israel ? " 
Though I die for the saying, " let me die the 
death of the righteous, aud let my last end be 
like his ! " 

Still Balak — with a strong patience that 
testified to his absolute confidence in the power 
of this man who withstood him, either to bless 
or to curse in the truth of the Most High — 
entreated and urged : — 

^' Come with me to another place, whence 
thou mayest see them ; the utmost part of 
them^ hut not all. Perhaps then thou mayest 
curse them for me." 

It is always under a hoodwink that men 



352 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

endeavor or persuade an evasion of the irrefra- 
gable. Perhaps Balaam even then had a lin- 
gering feeling, as a child has when he entreats 
and teases, that God had possibly not said all ; 
that there was still something for the Lord 
to be reminded of, and to consider, as there 
might be for a man before he should pronounce 
irrevocably. Would He think how terrible 
were those numbers of Israel? Might they 
yet be cursed — or crossed — in this present 
threat and attempt, if only in this ? 

And they went up to the top of Pisgah. 
There they offered again, upon seven altars. 
And again Balak stood by the burnt sacrifice, 
and Balaam went away again, to meet the 
Lord. 

" And the Lord put a word into his mouth," 
and he came back to the king with a second 
message : " God is not a man, that he should 
lie ; neither the son of man, that he should 
repent ; hath he not said, and shall he not 
do it ? Or hath he spoken, and shall he not 
make it good ? — Behold, I have received com- 
mandment to bless : and he hath blessed, and 
I cannot reverse it." 

Then Balak begged him, " Neither curse 
them at all, nor bless them at all." He would 



THE STORY OF BALAAM 353 

be content now, if only things might be left as 
they were. But Balaam's unaltered answer 
was, " Told I not thee. All that the Lord speak- 
eth, that must I do ? " Balak was nearly wild 
with his disappointment and despair. " Come 
yet to another place," he besought; and "he 
brought Balaam unto the top of Peor." 

Again, — the third time, — the seven altars, 
the seven bullocks, and the seven rams. 

But the third time, Balaam went awa}^ with 
a sold cleared from the last cloud of pagan 
confusion or doubt. It would not be merely 
" a word in his mouth " that he would have 
now from the Lord. It would come to him 
by the way of his heart, in his deepest, because 
single, convictions. 

"He went," not as at other times, "to seek 
enchantments," outward signs; some fresh 
wording or token to modify the divine sen- 
tence as he had understood it before. " He set 
his face toward the wilderness ; " a place empty 
of all but God ; and there he had a vision of 
" Israel abiding in his tents, according to his 
tribes ; and the Spirit of God came upon him." 

He went back to Balak, and for the last 
time " took up his parable : " — 

" The man whose eyes are open, which saw 



354 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

the vision of the Almighty, which heard the 
words of God, hath said. How goodly are 
thy tents, O Israel ! " In them are the abid- 
ing and the countenance of the Lord. " God 
hath brought Israel forth out of Egypt. He 
hath the strength of an unicorn. He shall eat 
up the nations. . . . Blessed is he that bless- 
eth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee." 

Then Balak was very angry, and smote his 
hands together. Yet the power of the truth 
was upon him, and the Presence of God by 
his prophet awed and restrained him from 
violence. 

" JP^lee to thy place ! " he cried out to Ba- 
laam, as if he would say, "lest I do thee a 
mischief." " I thought to promote thee to 
great honor ; but lo ! the Lord hath kept 
thee back from honor." 

Even the heathen king believed thus far, 
and bore discomfited testimony. 

" Spake I not to thy messengers the same 
thing?" demanded Balaam. "How could I 
do otherwise? Said I not, If Balak would 
give me his house full of silver and gold, I 
cannot go beyond the commandment of the 
Lord, to do good or bad of my own mind; 
what the Lord saith, that will I speak ? " 



THE STORY OF BALAAM 355 

" And now, I go nnto my people : come, I 
will tell thee what this people shall do to thy 
people in the latter days." 

Balaam dared now to go on and speak the 
whole trnth to this king, who asked for the 
truth, only praying that somehow it might be 
truth in his favor. 

" The man whose eyes are open, . . . which 
heard the words of God ; and knew the know- 
led oe of the Most Hio'h, which saw the vision 
of the Almighty, — he hath said : — 

" I shall see him, but not now : I shall be- 
hold him, but not nigh : there shall come a 
Star out of Jacob : a Sceptre shall arise out 
of Israel. . . . And Israel shall do valiantly. 
Out of Jacob shall come He that shall have 
dominion." 

Meanwhile, there shall be destruction. "Am- 
alek was the first of the nations ; but his latter 
end shall be that he perish forever." " The 
Kenite shall be wasted, until Asshur shall 
carry thee " — even thee, Israel — "away cap- 
tive." ..." Alas, who shall live when God 
doeth this!" 

After this solemn uplifting of the curtain 
of the mystery of time, — this grand and aw- 
ful glimpse of what Israel had been chosen 



356 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

for, both to do and to endure, to receive and 
to forfeit, unto the Coming of the One King 
upon the earth, for the ruling of the One 
Sceptre over the nations, — Balaam " rose 
up," calmly, unafraid, unhindered, " and went, 
and returned unto his place : and Balak also 
went his way." 

Our judgment of Balaam must still remain 
twofold. Seeing him one way, he is sub- 
lime ; another way, he is despicable. Because 
he had two ways. He was neither single-eyed 
nor single - hearted. In conscience and in 
vision, he was astigmatic. Looking back pres- 
ently, and reading his word and act by closely 
following events, we shall discover the deep, 
even self -deluding duplicity of his " counsel " 
with the king, by which he afterward contra- 
vened the Lord's message, prompting the se- 
duction of Israel to evil, blasted and cut short 
his own career, and sent down his name in 
obloquy and reproach, through the Hebrew 
generations and the Christian Church, to this 
our day. 

Never spake the Son of Man a greater 
" verily " than when he said, " If thine eye be 



THE STORY OF BALAAM 357 

single, thy whole body shall be full of light. 
But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall 
be full of darkness. If the light that is in 
thee be darkness, how great is that dark- 
ness ! " 



CHAPTER III 

THE VEXING OF THE MIDIANITES 

" And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 
Vex the Midianites, and smite them." And 
again, " The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 
Avenge the Children of Israel of the Midian- 
ites : afterward shalt thou be gathered to thy 
people." 

Why all this smiting and slaying? Why 
all this bloodshed and despoiling ? Why such 
driving out and extermination of whole peo- 
ples, and taking by violence of their lands ? 

Again and again the same terrible, dismay- 
ing questions confront us. Unable to answer, 
unable to look further than the mere passing 
occurrence, — stopping at the accounts of these 
particular casualties as if they were excep- 
tional in human experience, and God were 
bound especially to justify them, — men are 
in haste to revolt, and to fling reproach and 
discredit upon a record claimed to be Divine ; 
upon the chronicle of events said to have 



VEXING OF THE MIDIANITES 359 

been ordered and appointed in all their suc- 
cession by the will and wisdom of the Al- 
mighty ; and upon all else, consequently, which 
the Sacred Writing sets forth and sustains. 

But why find fault with the Bible and with 
Bible times, and not with the whole world and 
all its construction, its ages and its history? 
Do not the same questions confront us every- 
where? Is there anything different in the 
story of the Israelites and their breaking away 
from Egypt, and their conquest of their fore- 
fathers' old home in Canaan, from that of one 
nation after another that has broken from ser- 
vitude, want, or barbarism, and subdued what- 
ever stood in its way to a fairer possession, a 
broader rule and privilege, a possibility of a 
civilization and development which indeed it 
knew not of itself to anticipate or determine, 
but to which it has been led by the same won- 
derful, irresistible Power and Providence that 
worked for and with those old twelve tribes 
of Hebrews, and established by them a nation- 
ality and an order of life into which the very 
Son of Man — the outcoming and perfect Hu- 
manity — could be born from the Father into 
his waiting world ? Is our own American his- 
tory any less strange, or any more free from 



360 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

the human conflicts and partial wrongs that 
accompany every partial phase of progress in 
the grand expansion of the forceful germ of 
soul-life from its first hiding in the earthly to 
its final evolution into a majestic completeness 
and its inheritance of an everlasting kingdom ? 
Science bows to the facts it finds, and bends 
to them its conclusions, accepting process, and 
confessing " the survival of the fittest." Shall 
Faith do less, — Faith which defines the fittest 
with a larger interpretation, looks deeper in 
for causes, further on for issues and consum- 
mations ? 

We can but repeat, and insist on with our- 
selves to remember, that these things must be 
looked on in the light of a supreme event, the 
fulfilling of an eternal purpose. The earthly 
has to be disregarded ; to be rent, trampled 
upon, destroyed. Every partial and evil thing 
has to be swept away, even with a sword ; to 
be washed from the spirit of humanity, even 
with the body's blood of the human. Our 
'' Why ? " reaches down, and back, and up, to 
the very core of law and creation, — to the 
very original, utmost, eternal thought and im- 
pulse of the Nature which creates and con- 
ducts, — and demands of that an answer to re- 



VEXING OF THE MIDIANITES 361 

ceive and understand which would burst all 
limit in us, and make gods of us at once, 
knowing the good and the evil. 

We are not the makers, but the made ; we 
can only experience, and watch, and wait what 
God will do with us ; saying. He deals with 
us as Righteousness must deal with sinfulness, 
as Completeness must deal with incomplete- 
ness. 

He leaves it greatly with our own continual 
choice, the way we will compel Him to take. 
The instant man renounces sin, — single, in- 
dividual disobedience in the least or in the 
greatest of his individual heart and life, — 
that instant all the God - force in the world 
will be turned from cursing to blessing. For 
cursing is crossing ; it is one and the same 
thing. The lines conflict ; at the collision 
point the judgment fires break forth. 

It is always corruption and the evil thing 
that is warred against. When the Israelites 
themselves yielded to corruption, they were 
plagued and destroyed ; when an evil nation 
first corrupted and then withstood them, the 
Lord conquered with the remnant of his peo- 
ple, and the wicked perished. The enemy^ all 
through Holy Writ, in story and psalm, in 



362 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

command and prophecy, is the Evil ; that is 
to be triumphed over and brought to nought. 
That is what the men of the Bible were 
taught, by all the lessons of their lives, singly 
and as a nation, to know ; that is the Be- 
lief built of their experience, and registered 
"aforetime for our learning." 

What has been, will be ; until all comes 
into the final, beautiful subjection and liberty 
to which everything struggles and tends. If 
we found in the Bible stories of a people who 
never strayed nor sinned, who never killed 
nor destroyed, nor seized with the strong 
hand, we should say. This is not a history of 
men as we have ever known them, or known 
of them ; it is a fable of Arcadia, a dream of 
heaven. 

That such life may come, and not be a 
dream, or a vision of the unattainable, but a 
sure, divine reality, God lets men go through 
all that must at last show them how the self- 
struggle can never come to the divine satisfy- 
ing, but the self-surrender to the holy shall 
bring down the baptism of the Holy, and all 
the created be filled full of the glory and glad- 
ness of the Creating. 

Even through the din of strife and above 



VEXING OF THE MIDIANITES 363 

the shrieks of carnage, comes the Promise of 
the Time of the True. " They shall not hurt 
nor destroy in all my holy mountain." 

Nevertheless, this may not be attained by 
any external abrogation ; by any outward con- 
sent of multitudes ; it cannot be legislated 
for, nor arbitrated for, nor compelled. It can 
only arrive through individual purgation of 
evil, individual fealty to the true : then there 
shall be midtitudes as one man, and one man 
shall be as a multitude. When law is in the 
single soul, there will be no need of senates, 
nor legislatures, nor Supreme Courts of Jus- 
tice. 

" Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, 
that I will make a new covenant with the 
house of Israel ; not according to the covenant 
that I made with their fathers in the day I 
took them by the hand to bring them out of 
the land of Egypt ; which my covenant they 
brake, though I was an husband unto them. 
But this shall be the covenant that I will 
make with the house of Israel. After those 
days^ I will put my law in their inward parts, 
and write it in their hearts ; and I will be 
their God, and they shall be my people. And 
they shall teach no more every man his neigh- 



364 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

bor, and every man his brother, saying, Know 
the Lord : for they shall all know me, from 
the least of them unto the greatest of them, 
saith the Lord : for I will forgive their ini- 
quity, and I will remember their sin no 
more." 

That last clause, with its " for," is the in- 
tent and reason of all. Forgiveness and resto- 
ration, — not retribution and vengeance, — 
are the final purpose. That I may at last 
forgive, I will see to it that they shall learn. 
Covenant after covenant there shall be, — for 
" those days " and for the after days ; they 
shall have the law of my own Heart in their 
hearts, at the last, and my perfect Love shall 
have its way with them ; for " I will forgive," 
saith the Lord ! 

Close by the borders of the Promised Land, 
the Israelites had been dwelling in the land 
of the idolaters. The king of Moab, looking 
abroad upon the outspread tents of their hosts, 
said of them that they covered the face of the 
earth, abiding over against him ; and he trem- 
bled before the threat of their approach. He 
could get no curse against them, to strengthen 
him to try to drive them out, but only an 



VEXING OF THE MIDIANITES 365 

assurance from the prophet whom he entreated 
that the strength of the Lord God was with 
Israel, and the " shout of a king among them." 

But the double man, Balaam, had not left 
him without a suggestion that craftily hedged 
the commandment of the Almighty with in- 
sinuation of a way around it. Even in his 
refusals of the curse, there had lurked precur- 
sively the subtle hint of what undoubtedly, 
according to subsequent Scriptural allusions, 
Balaam more or less openly advised : — 

'''He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacobs 
neither hath he seen 2:>erverseness in Israel.''' 

" There is the secret ; Israel is upright ; 
you may not prevail against him by the 
sword ; you may hinder him by beguiling." 

Behind whatever words were used was this 
evil counsel. The Midianites were strong in 
iniquity. And of that cunning speech it came 
to pass that they took allurements for their 
weapons, and Israel fell. He sinned with the 
strange people : he joined them in their hea- 
then sacrifices ; he threw himself headlong 
into the surging temptations ; and " the anger 
of the Lord was kindled against him." 

We may suppose that the doubleness of 
Balaam reached even to the sophistry with 



366 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

himself that it was well for Israel to be tested. 
If the trial were withstood, this people would 
have thoroughly merited their favor with Je- 
hovah, and nothing then could hinder their 
triumph. Where was any resisting of the 
Lord in this ? If, on the other hand, Israel 
stumbled, and was overcome, where was the 
disloyalty on his part in having so declared 
and predicted? He had but stated the truth 
about God's dealing, the condition of his 
blessing. He had only said, " In righteous- 
ness is the safety of this people ; the com- 
mandment of their God is their stronghold." 

This seems, indeed, upon the face of the 
narrative, to have been all ; and yet after 
the Israelites had fallen in sin and been pun- 
ished with slaughter and plague, and been 
brought back to their work and their war, 
" avenging the Lord of Midian," Moses, pass- 
ing sentence on the captives, brought indict- 
ment thus, against the wickedness and its in- 
citer: "Behold, these caused the children of 
Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to com- 
mit trespass against the Lord." And Micah, 
the prophet of an after age, urging against in- 
iquity and oppression and false balances and 
lies, cries out, " O my people, remember now 



VEXING OF THE MIDIANITES 367 

what Balak king of Moab consulted, and what 
Balaam the son of Beor answered him, that 
ye may laiow the righteousness of the Lord." 

Away on again, in the exhortations of Peter 
and Jude the Apostles, and in the words of 
the Spirit himself to the churches, heard of 
Saint John the Divine, the same old example 
of warning is recalled and repeated : — 

"The Lord knoweth how to deliver the 
godly out of temptations, and to reserve the 
unjust unto the day of judgment to be pun- 
ished : chiefly them that walk after the flesh 
in the lust of uncleanness. . . . Presumptuous 
are they, self-willed ; . . . spots and blem- 
ishes, sporting themselves with their own 
deceivings while they feast with you, .... 
beguiling unstable souls : having an heart ex- 
ercised with covetous practices ; cursed chil- 
dren, which have forsaken the right way, and 
are gone astray, following the way of Balaam 
the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of un- 
righteousness." 

" Woe unto them ! for they have gone in 
the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the 
error of Balaam for reward." 

" I have a few things against thee " (church 
of Pergamos), " because thou hast there them 



LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught 
Balac to cast a stumbling block before the 
children of Israel." 

That same Voice had spoken this, in the 
Life upon the earth : — 

" Woe unto the world because of offences : 
it must needs be that offences come, but woe 
unto him by whom the offence cometh ! " 

" If any man cause to offend one of these 
little ones, it were better for him that a mill- 
stone were hanged about his neck, and he 
were drowned in the depths of the sea." 

Balaam may hide his motive from himself ; 
he can never hide it from the Spirit of all 
Truth. 

Among the many perishings, then, that have 
come, and that must come because of sin, and 
to make room for righteousness, the Midianites 
perished. 

Balaam, the son of Beor, perished also with 
them, slain with the sword. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE CAMP IN MOAB 

The children of Israel encamped in the 
plains of Moab. 

They were not led over Jordan with an im- 
petuous rush, to seize possession, at first sight 
and possible reach, of the beautiful land to- 
ward which they had made pilgrimage for 
forty years. It was not to be a heedless pour- 
ing in, as a wild horde, clutching at that 
which was to be theirs only under a Divine 
ordering, for a Divine end. They were to be 
under law and commandment still. 

That an eager, enthusiastic multitude of 
men, strong in the great numbers that had 
terrified King Balak, and swayed by a hope 
and impulse that had, through whatever lapses 
into discontent, urged them onward for nearly 
half a century, should have bowed to the con- 
trol of their leader at the supreme moment 
of approaching triumph, is alone a sufficient 
evidence of the mighty, realizing Belief of the 



370 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

man himself in the God of his nation, and His 
continual inspiration and direction in every 
step and doing of its people. 

This waiting, just over Jordan beyond Jer- 
icho, to receive the final reminders and ad- 
monitions of their Prophet Commander, and 
to learn his plan and prospectus for their 
future life and government, — this orderly 
acquiescence in delay, so simply set down 
without comment or argument, is one of the 
chief of those inherent proofs which establish 
the testimony, not of mere literal fact, but of 
the reality behind the fact, that we are seek- 
ing. It was truly a Prophet and a People 
bound together, and moved or checked, only 
by that which they believed in as a Divine 
Will, made known under divinely imposed 
conditions, who dwelt expectant in these plains 
along the borders of the Salt Sea and the 
River, until God's word should come to them 
to make their advance. 

Moses had a great deal to say to his people. 
It would seem that he had begun with his 
Deuteronomy, or Repetition, as he talked with 
them by the way, during the last days of their 
slow approach through the desert country, all 
along from the Gulf of Akabah, under the 



THE CAMP IN MOAB 371 

mountain ridge of Seir, toward the Dead Sea 
and the Jordan ; and that he only concluded it 
here, in this final encampment ; for we have 
the two separate statements, in the closing 
words of the Book of Numbers, repeated from 
a little further back, and the opening ones of 
the Book of Deuteronomy, — that " these were 
the commandments and the judgments which 
the Lord commanded by the hand of Moses 
unto the children of Israel in the plains of 
Moab, by the Jordan near Jericho ; " and 
" these be the words which Moses spake unto 
all Israel on this side Jordan in the wilder- 
ness, in the plain over against the Red Sea, 
between Paran, and Tophel, and Laban, and 
Hazeroth, and Dizahab," — all of these named 
places being either indistinctly traceable as 
once inhabited localities, or as known stations 
of the Israelites in their pilgrimage, in the 
desert of Paran or of Zin, stretching down 
from Canaan between El Tih and Mount 
Seir ; thus indicating the territory traversed 
in this last journeying, and the scene of the 
long, retrospective teaching. 

It was a careful recapitulation ; a grand 
summing up of history and law ; a living over 
of the past, and a shaping forth and dictation 



372 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

of the future ; a gathering together into a 
sublime unity of all the dealings of the Lord, 
and the assertions of his truth, and the requi- 
sitions of his righteousness, which had filled 
the life of Moses, now nearing to its close, 
and had been his august and sacred errand, 
not only to the Hebrew people, but through 
them to the coming generations of mankind. 
It was a review of faith and purpose which 
declares them reiteratively and distinctly, 
re-presenting them in the strong light of an 
already large fulfillment, and reaching on by 
them into a glory of realization that means far 
more to the world and its ages than just the 
coming of certain tribes of men into a certain 
corner of the earth for a temporary possession. 
It is like the review under the latter light, and 
at the pass of Jordan, of every human history 
and soul. 

It reaches back to the days in Horeb, where 
the Israelites had sojourned until " the Lord 
God spake unto them, saying. Ye have dwelt 
long enough in this mount ; . . . Go, . . . 
and possess the land which the Lord sware 
unto your fathers ; " the days in which they 
had increased so mightily, and had become 
" as the stars of heaven for multitude." " The 



THE CAMP IN MOAB 373 

Lord God of your fathers," parenthesizes 
Moses grandly and tenderly in his reminding, 
" make you a thousand times so many as ye 
are, and bless you, as he hath promised you." 

He sketches over again the government 
which he had constituted for them then ; the 
appointment of the Judges from among, and 
over, the tribes. 

" Hear the causes between your brethren," 
had been his charge to them ; " and judge 
righteously between every man and his bro- 
ther, and the stranger that is with him. Ye 
shall not respect persons in judgment ; but 
ye shall hear the small as well as the great ; 
ye shall not be afraid of the face of man, for 
the judgment is God's : and the cause that is 
too hard for you, bring it unto me, and I will 
hear it." 

" I commanded you at that time," he says, 
" all the things that ye should do." 

The departure from Horeb, the going 
through " all that great and terrible wilder- 
ness " between Horeb in the south and the 
mountain of the Amorites on the north ; the 
search into the Land, and the finding of the 
sweet, grape-laden valley of Eshcol ; the bring- 
ing down of the fruit to the camp by the 



374 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

mountain ; the rejoicing with which the people 
cried, " It is a good land which the Lord our 
God doth give us ! " — all this Moses touched 
upon, calling back the story of the fathers to 
the minds of the children who, after the forty 
years more of wandering, had now come, with 
the fathers' story and its lessons in their 
hearts, to the borders of the Land again, in a 
closer and surer approach. Now, he was tell- 
ing them, they were to enter in ; but they 
were to remember the old unbeliefs and the 
rebellions, that they should not fall into the 
like themselves. 

" Notwithstanding " that the Land was 
found to be so good, and notwithstanding 
their great gladness, he goes on, speaking of 
the history of Israel as one in all the genera- 
tions, " ye would not go up ; but rebelled 
against the commandment of the Lord your 
God, and murmured in your tents, and said. 
Because the Lord God hated us, he hath 
brought us forth out of the land of Egypt, to 
deliver us into the hands of the Amorites, to 
destroy us." 

Not only indeed was it the old evil of a past 
generation, yet inherent and latent in that to 
which the memory then came down ; it was 



THE CAMP IN MOAB 375 

the same old evil that has lurked and lasted in 
the world till now ; the age-long impatience 
of the human heart, that on the very edge of 
its inheritance turns from it ignorantly, blindly, 
willfully, because of the remaining pain and 
peril of the way ; distrusts and rebukes the 
Lord, and lets fear blot out his promise, and 
the remembrance of all He has done so long 
" in the wilderness." The pathetic reproach 
of Moses falls upon all the complaint and re- 
bellion of men against immediate difficulty, as 
it fell upon Israel : " Thou hast seen how the 
Lord thy God bore thee as a man doth bear 
his son, in all the way that ye went, until ye 
came into this place. Yet in this thing ye did 
not believe the Lord your God." 

So, then, he repeats to them, the Lord was 
angry; and though they pleaded against his 
sentence with a selfish repentance. He would 
not hear them, but suffered them to rush into 
their own punishment as the only thing that 
could really convince them, rebelling as they 
w^ere even in their declared contrition ; and 
they " went presumptuously up into the hill " 
against their enemies, who " came out against 
them, and chased them, as bees do," stinging 
and destroying them, and compelling their re- 
treat, " even unto Hormah." 



376 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

" Then we turned," he says, patiently iden- 
tifying himself with his people in all the pen- 
alty of their error, — " and took our journey 
into the wilderness by the way of the Red 
Sea ; " the journey that was to consume the 
life of all the men of war who had sinned in 
that disobedience, to destroy them from among 
the host. " And we compassed Mount Seir 
many days," is his simple statement of the 
long wandering until again the Lord said, — 
as He says at last after whatever perverse 
or disciplinary pilgrimage, — " Ye have com- 
passed this mountain (wilderness) long enough. 
Turn you northward." 

Go you my way, now. And all the way, as 
I shall tell you. So the command came by 
the mouth of Moses to the people at Mount 
Seir. And here begins something different in 
the commanding ; something that gives us, if 
we look for it, an insight into the very thing 
in the counsel of the Most High that has been 
made a stumbling-block against the faith of 
his Providence ; the lohy of a destruction and 
a saving that seem arbitrary, partial, un-God- 
like, to a partial human comprehension. We 
must remind ourselves again that we are read- 
ing about God's leading of them that believe 



THE CAMP IN MOAB 377 

in Him ; and not only of that, but of his 
bringing men to believe in Him. To that be- 
lieving He had first led, through pains and 
oppressions, slaveries, judgments, temporal ob- 
structions, even the sons of Abraham ; in that 
belief He was now showing them himself as 
the God of the covenant ; of the close-coming, 
and abiding ; the God of the Tabernacle, who 
makes his tent among the habitations of men ; 
who works with them and for them, according 
to his intent and promise from the beginning. 

He was trcdning a people — not so much 
better as yet than the rest — out of all the 
multitudes of the earth ; that there might be 
salvation in the earth ; that the knowledge of 
himself might begin again in it, in the pure, 
primal, and eternal way. He was dealing, for a 
time, as only with a handful. He was making 
leaven^ to be hidden in the full measures of 
meal, that all might be leavened. That is al- 
ways the way of the coming of the Kingdom 
of heaven. 

We are not told what He was doing at the 
same time for the debased Canaanites ; how 
the very thrusting them from their possessions, 
the slaughter and despoiling of this generation 
of them, might be like his chastisements of the 



378 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

wilderness upon his own chosen nation, who 
knew Him best, though as yet only a little, 
and whom He was leading by cloud and fire, 
through one whole generation also of suffering 
and loss, to their sure and beautiful inheri- 
tance under his love and law. We can see — 
human records can tell — but one side at a 
time ; yet, indeed, when all the stories shall 
have been lived and told, we shall know that 
God has been all around ; that He is, in truth, 
the God of the whole earth. 

The Canaanites were to be dealt with as the 
God and Father of all knew best how to deal. 
Their idolatries, their low and sensual tribal 
life and custom, were to be broken up and 
swept away. A new march of men toward the 
everlasting Light was to be made way for. A 
believing host was to come in ; the Name and 
service of Jehovah were to be established upon 
the earth. Not a perfect, nor a deserving peo- 
ple, were these Hebrews ; it was a race yet 
filled with its own evils and ignorances ; but 
where do we learn, in all the material and 
spiritual evolution of the universe, that the 
perfect thing leaps into full development across 
any chasm of the unattained and the opposing ? 
It is only the next that takes place, and dis- 



THE CAMP IX MOAB 379 

places ; but it does take its own place and turn, 
making tlie step onward. That which was 
behind may seem to perish, as to circumstance ; 
the life that was in it passes forward, God 
knows how. He who caused the fragments to 
be gathered up into the twelve baskets-full, — 
typic number for an entire saving, — has way, 
and time, and place, for all. 

In the course of the Israelites northward, 
lay the lands of other peoples. The children 
of Jacob were not the only inheritors of gift 
and promise. The divine idea had not been 
altogether lost out of Edom and of Moab. The 
children of Esau possessed it in the one ; the 
children of Lot in the other. A bruised reed 
might the one be ; and smoking flax the other ; 
but the Lord will not break, nor quench. He 
will " bring forth," from the least remnants, 
his " judgment unto truth. He shall not fail, 
nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment 
in the earth ; the isles " — the small, sepa- 
rate, feeble places — " shall wait for his law." 
Their time shall come ; meanwhile, his germ 
of truth is there, and He will shield it. 

" The Lord spake unto me," says Moses, 
"saying. Command thou the people. Ye are 
to pass through the coast of your hrethren the 



380 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

children of Esau, which dwell in Mount Seir ; 
they shall be afraid of you ; take heed to your- 
selves : meddle not with them. I will not give 
you of their land, no, not a foot's breadth. I 
have given Mount Seir unto Esau for a pos- 
session. . . . And when we passed by from 
our brethren the children of Esau, ... we 
turned, and passed by the way of the wilder- 
ness of Moab. And the Lord said unto me. 
Distress not the Moabites, neither contend 
with them in battle. I will not give thee of 
their land for a possession ; because I have 
given it unto the children of Lot for a pos- 
session." 

" Contend not with your brethren ; despoil 
them not ; for my word is with them also." 
Do we not hear that command in these days 
also, defending way and place, given of the 
Lord, of every feeblest form of faith, — of 
every least lingering of heavenly motive in 
any human character ? 

Overbear and cast out the militant evil; 
there God is with you ; but move gently and 
peacefully among them that have God's word 
as well as you. Yes ; even " buy meat of them, 
that ye may eat ; and water that ye may drink." 
They, in my name, can give you something; 



THE CAMP IN MOAB 381 

they have the bread and the cup for you, be- 
cause ye belong to Me ; they also shall have 
their reward. 

Moses goes on : " Now rise up, said I, and 
get you over the brook Zered." 

The thirty and eight years were complete, 
since the sentence of wandering, and the de- 
parture from Kadesh-Barnea. " All the gen- 
eration of the men of war was wasted out 
from among the host, as the Lord sware unto 
them." 

And the Lord said, " Thou art to pass over 
through Ar, this day ; when thou comest nigh 
over against the children of Ammon, distress 
them not, nor meddle with them. I will not 
give thee of the land ; I have given it unto the 
children of Lot. . . . Rise up, and take your 
journey, and pass over the river Arnon: be- 
hold, I have given into thine hand Sihon the 
Araorite, king of Heshbon, and his land ; be- 
gin to possess it, and contend with him in bat- 
tle. This day will I begin to put the dread of 
thee and the fear of thee upon the nations." 

Yet Moses, by that same just command of 
God, gave the king of Heshbon opportunity. 
It was test; after that, as it had been done 



382 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

with Pharaoh, should be shown the deliverance 
the Lord had for his people. 

"Give me meat, for money ; give me water, 
for money ; that we may eat and drink. I 
will pass through on my feet, — as in Sin and 
in Ar ; do as they did unto me ; until I shall 
pass over Jordan into the land which the Lord 
our God giveth us." 

Then the fellowship and the brotherhood 
broke down, and the enmity began. The king 
of Heshbon refused. " God hardened his 
spirit, and made his heart obstinate," as He 
had done with Pharaoh. Because they would 
have it so; because by the law of life and 
spirit, God could do no other with either for 
the time. 

And so the terror set in again ; the cities 
were taken, and the people perished ; " the 
men, and the women, and the little children." 

Are they not perishing every day? Yet 
God careth for the sparrows. 

Almost to the point they had then reached, 
encamped in the river margins opposite to 
Jericho across the Jordan, — on the literal 
brink of the accomplishment of the protracted 
hope of a generation, — Moses had here brought 



THE CAMP IN MOAB 383 

his reminiscences of the long way ; calling the 
people continually to observe and acknowledge 
the hand of the Lord God in all their leading. 
It was still, and always, " The Lord said unto 
me," and "so I spake unto you," and ''so I 
commanded you," and " so it came to pass," 
and " the Lord delivered into our hands " the 
kings, and the cities, and the people. 

Og, the giant, king of Bashan, the last of 
the terrible men, was last contended with and 
overcome, close upon the Jordan borders of 
the Promised Land ; and all the cities of the 
plain, and the land along the river Arnon, 
and Mount Gilead, and their cities, fell into 
the hands of the army of the Israelites ; and 
Moses had divided them among the children 
of Reuben and Gad and Manasseh, as the first 
possessions and outworks of the new kingdom 
of the tribes. There these brotherhoods were 
to leave their families and their cattle, and go 
over with their other kinsmen as men of war, 
to conquer and possess, until all should be es- 
tablished beyond Jordan ; and to this emprise 
and end Moses commanded and appointed 
Joshua, the Man of Might. " I said unto 
him," repeats he in his narrative now so nearly 
ended, " Thine eyes have seen aU that the 



384 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

Lord your God hath done unto these two 
kings : so shall the Lord do unto all the king- 
doms whither thou passest. Ye shall not fear 
them ; for the Lord your God he shall fight 
for you." Not the man Joshua, in whatever 
might and courage he showed strong, heroic, 
should have the battle on his hands ; a man's 
strength might break down, — a mortal fear 
might come upon the mortal spirit; but the 
Lord God behind and with the man whom 
He had chosen — the Infinite Power and the 
Unfailing Will — should go forth and do his 
own work among the people of the earth. 
Moses really put nothing into the hands of 
Joshua; he burdened him with no awful, 
lonely responsibility ; he only put Joshua him- 
self into the hands of God. 

And then came the great outburst of his 
own human longing and entreaty. After all, 
might he not even enter in to behold the 
" good land beyond the Jordan " ? Just once 
to see it in its fair outstretch, its grand heights 
and beautiful valleys ? "I besought the Lord 
at that time," he says, " saying, I pray thee, 
let me go over, and see the good land, the 
goodly mountain, and Lebanon. But the 
Lord would not hear me : He said unto me. 



THE CAMP IN MOAB 385 

Let it suffice thee ; speak no more to me of 
this matter. Get thee up into the top of 
Pisgah, and lift up thine eyes westward, and 
northward, and southward, and eastward ; and 
behold it with thine eyes : for thou shalt not 
go over this Jordan." 

As a man speaking with a man, Moses 
heard the Lord's word in his spirit. Does it 
matter whether there was an audible sound in 
the air about his ears, or not? We are not 
reading an altogether literal story of physical 
signs ; the phrases of a physical condition and 
imderstanding are of necessity used ; but what 
we are learning is the high, wonderful, near 
experience of a great, believing human soul 
with its God. And Moses was so close with 
his Maker, his whole thought and being were 
so given into Divine control, that not only was 
he absolutely sure of what God said to him, 
but absolutely in acquiescence with the true 
and holy judgment made known to him. The 
" Let it suffice thee " was the " Peace be 
still," to all selfish perturbation. There the 
whole " matter " between Moses and Jehovah 
was laid down. It was like the " Woman, 
what have I to do with thee," that the Christ 
spoke even to his mother. It was no harsh, 



386 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

repulsing refusal, but a calm, supreme bidding 
into a still and perfect trust. 

" Charge Joshua, and encourage him," the 
voice went on to say. " Strengthen hi7n; for 
he shall go over before this people, and he 
shall cause them to inherit the land which thou 
shalt see." 

When a man's life is altogether possessed 
and informed by the Heavenly Will, his own 
will cannot be a pain and cross against it ; he 
goes over, whole-souled, into the Divine pur- 
pose, and is at one with the Right and the 
Best. As soon as he knows definitely what 
must be, he no longer desires, with vehemence 
and struggle, any other. Moses was not only 
in the hands, but in the Heart, of God. He 
yielded himself, and rested there, content. 
His life was " hid," and safe, like the life of 
the Only Begotten. If he might not cross 
" this Jordan," he should yet be lifted over 
some mightier, more mysterious Eiver, into 
some yet grander, appointed place. 

" So we abode," he says quietly, " in the 
valley over against Beth-Peor." 



CHAPTER V 

THE RIGHTEOUS COMMONWEALTH 

Patiently, exactly, in every full and mi- 
nute particular, Moses now rehearsed to the 
waiting host the laws and ordinances that God 
had given him for the people, by which they 
should live in His grace and favor, which are 
the harmonies of human obedience and the 
Divine wisdom. 

" This ye shall do," — This ye shall not 
do," — he commanded them, all the way 
through the possible crises of circumstance, 
both large and small. Was ever a law-giving, 
was ever a framing of national constitution, 
like this marvelous ordaining in comprehen- 
siveness and detail? 

With all that was temporary, with all that 
concerned only a rough half -civilization, — 
that recognized extremest brutal possibility, 
and denounced such sin as we shudder even to 
hear denounced, — where has there ever been 
a legislation that went so straight to the cen- 



388 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

tral right in all things, and declared such an 
enforcement of every rule of justice, purity, 
and truth, for justice, purity, and truth's own 
sake? for the sake of the knowledge of the 
One Holy, Just, and True? "That thou," 
says Moses to the Hebrew commonwealth, 
" mayest fear this glorious and fearful name. 
The Lord Thy God:' 

Is it possible in the face of this sublime 
word and authority — before this pattern of 
a government announced and accredited from 
the Highest — to fail of the conviction and 
confession that so, finally, after men have 
tried all their poor, halfway hedgings and 
penalties, their petty policies and expediences 
for material interests, and have found that the 
larger the expansions and complications of 
such national life and so-called order, the more 
miserable and the more hopeless are the par- 
tialities and the confusions, — we inust return 
to the simplicities of the Law of God, to the 
enactment of ordinances in his Name only, 
and to the " Thus saith the Lord " as the first 
and final argument in all doing and relation 
between man and man, between peoples and 
their organized controls, and between group 
and group of the separate powers and publics 
of the earth ? 



• THE RIGHTEOUS COMMONWEALTH 389 

Until somewhere in time and place and 
history shall arise a Moses who shall lead a 
yet larger, nobler Exodus out of our own false 
traditions, our Egyptian corruptions and sen- 
sual wisdoms, into a desert of purifying, and 
through it to a new commonwealth of Israel, 
must we not look back to the Moses who be- 
lieved in God in the face of the Pharaohs, and 
in a remote age and an unready generation so 
antetyped the Christ himself as to prepare for 
Him an expectant nation ; and, looking back, 
must we not own that what he saw and be- 
lieved could have been none other than the 
vision and the truth which the Father giveth to 
the Son, — which cometh only from the Father- 
hood through the Sonhood, and which hath 
spoken continually to the world through all the 
prophets ? Must not this old Insight and Be- 
lief of Moses be our hope and assurance that 
forever in the world is something which 
through the dark urges on into the light, and 
in the fullness of time shall be another Di- 
vine Coming in the Flesh, and a Reign in the 
earthly that shall lift it up into the heavenly ? 

The ceremonial law is very particular and 
extended ; manifold and exact ; it takes much 



390 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

wording, much length of rehearsing and record- 
ing. It became, as all formality and detail 
must become, so much the life of the Jewish 
people, so much their rallying point and foun- 
dation of faith and polity, that its externality 
has been the obvious thing in their history ; 
that which other peoples, looking on and read- 
ing the record, have come, like the Israelites 
themselves, to regard as the chief thing in 
their nationality ; its faith, its bond, its wit- 
ness of their especial claim ; the matter to be 
discussed and judged, as to its absolute truth 
or error, its perfect, inclusive wisdom or its 
partial, faulty, time -answering expediency; 
whether indeed it were of any divine origin 
at all, or only a clever human statecraft ; so 
to decide definitely, one way or the other, the 
verdict of after ages, whether these men of 
the twelve tribes were actually the chosen of 
Jehovah, to hold and show forth his truth 
in the world, or only one of the old, early, 
half-blind races of the earth, groping their 
own sense-hindered way toward the far-oif, 
universal light that is yet to come. The be- 
lief of the world has been hampered by this 
criticism of form, instead of going straight to 
the great, essential conception itself, which was 



THE RIGHTEOUS COMMONWEALTH 391 

then already living in men's souls, and which 
gave to even harsh and cumbersome ritual and 
observance a quickening vitality. Even in the 
mere story, that which is all along centrally 
important, and so given by the word of Moses, 
has been overlooked, or not even reached, 
through this stopping to find fault with, or to 
try to justify, the temporary outworks that 
protected it. 

All through the Book of Deuteronomy, or 
Recapitulation, if we pause to note, we find 
this first, interior reality behind all law in- 
sisted on. The grandest sayings are the 
simplest and the briefest. That upon which 
Moses built his wonderful order and economy 
is the selfsame upon which Christ declared 
to Peter that He was building his church, — 
the inmost revelation and close-coming of God, 
by his truth and his righteousness, to the 
spirits of his children. 

" What nation is there so great, that hath 
statutes and judgments so righteous as all this 
law, which I set before you this day ? For 
what nation is there so great, who hath God 
so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in 
all things that we call upon him for? " 

" Hearken unto the statutes and the judg- 



392 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

ments : keep them and do them : keep thy 
soul diligently, lest thou forget the things 
which thine eyes have seen, and lest they de- 
part from thine heart." 

" Your eyes have seen what the Lord did. 
Ye that did cleave unto the Lord your God 
are alive every one of you this day." 

" That day that thou stoodest before the 
Lord in Horeb, the Lord said unto me, Gather 
me the people together, and I will make them 
hear my words, that they may learn to fear 
Me all the days that they shall live upon the 
earth, and that they may teach their children." 

" And the Lord commanded me at that time 
to teach you statutes and judgments, that ye 
might do them." 

The doing of the statutes, the learning of 
the judgments, were to be the keeping near 
and alive to God. Statutes and judgments 
are not ceremonies and sacrifices ; these were 
but expressions and reminders ; statutes and 
judgments are righteousness and truth, — the 
goodness and the knowledge of the life with 
God. This was what Moses believed in. 
Form was only an outgrowth. Outgrowtli 
changes. The seed principle remains the 
same. 



THE RIGHTEOUS COMMONWEALTH 393 

" Take heed to yourselves," he says, warn- 
ing them against excess and literality in form ; 
" ye saw no manner of similitude on the day 
that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb, out of 
the midst of the fire. Take heed unto your- 
selves, lest ye forget the covenant of the Lord 
your God which he made w^th you, and make 
you a graven image, which the Lord thy God 
hath forbidden thee. . . . When ye shall cor- 
rupt yourselves, and make a graven image, or 
the likeness of any thing^ and shall do evil 
in the sight of the Lord your God, — I call 
heaven and earth to witness that ye shall soon 
utterly perish, . . . and the Lord shall scat- 
ter you, and ye shall be left, few in number, 
among the heathen, and there ye shall serve 
gods, the work of men's hands," — the things 
men love and worship, — " which neither see 
nor hear," — nor have any soul of life in 
them. 

" But if, from thence^'' (even,) " thou shalt 
seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find him, 
if thou seek him with all thy heart, and with 
all thy soul. When thou art in tribulation, 
and all these things are come upon thee, even 
in the latter days " (the eleventh hour days), 
" if thou turn to the Lord thy God, and shalt 



394 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

be obedient unto his voice, he will not forsake 
thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers 
which he sware unto them. — For ask now of 
the days that are past, . . . did ever people 
hear the voice of God speaking out of the 
midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and 
live ? " 

Fire and terror men had seen, and felt; 
awful power had come upon them, had made 
them afraid, and they had perished; but Is- 
rael had heard God out of the midst of the 
awf ulness, as by a word out of a human heart ; 
and they had lived. " Unto thee it was 
shewed, that thou mightest know that it was 
the Lord^^ — this manifested, speaking, near- 
coming Commander and Friend, — " he is 
God : there is none else beside him. Out of 
heaven," — out of the ineffable, the unap- 
proachable, — " he made thee " (in the spirit) 
"to hear his voice, that he might instruct 
thee; and upon earth^^ — in the elemental 
sign, — " he showed thee his great fire ; and 
thou heardest his words out of the midst of 
the fire. . . . Know, therefore, this day, and 
consider it in thine heart, that the Lord he is 
God, in the heaven above and upon the earth 
beneath ; there is none else. Therefore keep 



THE RIGHTEOUS COMMONWEALTH 895 

his statutes and commandments, that it may 
go well with thee." . . . 

" The Lord our God made a covenant with 
us in Horeb ; . . . not with our fathers, but 
with us, even us, who are all of us here alive 
this day. The Lord talked with yoii^^^ — with 
this very present generation of you, who have 
been born and grown to your manhood since 
that day ; for what the Lord speaks once. He 
speaks forever, — can we not hear the word of 
Moses, thus declaring, sounding down to " us, 
even us," of this late, doubting, questioning 
time ? 

" The Lord talked with you^ face to face, in 
the mount, out of the midst of the fire, saying, 
I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee 
out of the land of Egypt," — the old earth 
and time of darkness and ignorance of me, — 
" from the house of bondage," — to material 
things only ; and " Thou shalt have none other 
gods before ??ie." 

" Who can think that the belief of Moses, 
and the word of God from Sinai, are not truth 
and message to this day ? Surely it is not 
less of us than of those people waiting and lis- 
tening under that burning mountain long ago, 
that the Lord says unto his prophets, striv- 



396 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

ing with the unbelief of the ages, " O that 
there were such an heart in them, that they 
would fear me, and keep all my command- 
ments, always^ that it might be well with 
them, and with their children, forever ! " 

Surely it is no less than the whole spiritual 
commonwealth of human kind that is con- 
cerned to heed that last " Hear, O Israel," 
after the second solemn enunciation of the Ten 
Sayings by the borders of the Jordan : — 

" The Lord our God is one Lord : 

" And thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and 
with all thy might. 

" And these words, which I command thee 
this day, shall be in thine heart : 

" And thou shalt teach them diligently to 
thy children. — And when thy son asketh thee 
in time to come, saying. What mean the testi- 
monies, and the statutes, and the judgments, 
which the Lord our God hath commanded 
you ? Then shalt thou say unto thy son. We 
were Pharaoh's bondmen in Egypt ; and the 
Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty 
hand. — And he brought us out from thence, 
that he might bring us in, to give us the land 
which he sware unto our fathers. And the 



THE RIGHTEOUS COMMONWEALTH 397 

Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to 
fear the Lord our God, for our good always, 
that he might preserve us alive, as at this day. 
And it shall be our righteousness " (our Tight- 
ness before God ; and our well-being with all 
things) " if we observe to do all these com- 
mandments before the Lord our God, as he 
hath commanded us." 

" For this commandment which I command 
thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, nei- 
ther is it far oif. It is not in heaven, that 
thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to 
heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear 
it, and do it ? Neither is it beyond the sea." 
It is beyond no sea, of time, or separation, or 
change, or decays of governments or faiths, or 
nations. " But the word is very nigh thee, in 
thy mouth, and in thine heart, thou that may- 
est do it." " The Lord thy God will circum- 
cise thine heart, to love the Lord thy God with 
all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou 
may est live." 

Was that not the promulgation of the King- 
dom ? Is not Israel yet encamped upon the 
Jordan, just outside the Country of her Prom- 
ise ? Has not God been leading her, down the 
years, through the wilderness, through the 



398 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

strifes, into the very sight and nearness of 
what may be, whenever our willingness shall 
meet his own good purpose? Has not the 
same word been uttered all along: "If ye 
will enter into life," — as men or as a people, 
— "keep the commandments"? Is not the 
same promise written for the believers of the 
New Testimony that was given to them of the 
Old ? That there should be made of them, 
through faith in God, and life by his word, 
"a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, 
an holy nation, a peculiar people," to " shew 
forth the praises of him who hath called" 
them " out of darkness into his marvellous 
light?" 

" Blessed are they that do his command- 
ments ; that they may have right to the tree 
of life," — " whose leaves are for the healing 
of the nations," — " and may enter in tJirougJi 
the gates into the city." 

" That great city, the holy Jerusalem, de- 
scending out of heaven from God," from the 
"new heavens" into the "new earth," when 
all shall be accomplished ; when " the taber- 
nacle of God shall be with men, and he will 
dwell with them ; and they shall be his people, 
and God himself shall be with them, and be 



THE RIGHTEOUS COMMONWEALTH 399 

their God/" When He that is upon the throne 
shall say, " Behold, I make all things new." 
And when they that have overcome, in the 
name and strength of their God, shall inherit 
all things. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE ENTERING IN 

The Faith of Moses had been fully unfolded 
to his people. Whether he felt, distinctly, its 
everlasting reach or not, we find and feel in it 
the vital truth of the life of the world, and the 
sublime prophecy of which the great Entering 
In of aU tribes and kindreds and nations to 
one perfect Home and Commonwealth is at 
last to be the mighty and holy fulfillment. 

But did the Leader of Israel die without 
some sight of the final heavenly consumma- 
tion, any more than without that of the near- 
ing earthly accomplishment ? 

When he had spoken all these last words, 
and had sung his great song, and gone up into 
the top of Pisgah, was not his vision more than 
of the little land of Canaan between the Jor- 
dan and the sea ? Was it not rather like that 
of John, when the Spirit carried him away to 
a "great and high mountain," and showed him 
the city that had the " glory of God ; " with 



THE ENTERING IN ■ 401 

its wall of twelve foundations, of burning pre- 
cious stones, and its twelve gates, " every sev- 
eral gate of one pearl," one immaculate purity, 
by which alone the tribes should enter? Was 
not the feeling of what God had prepared for 
his own people, when He should have made 
all people his own, that which touched him, if 
only half aware, as he looked forth from the 
south unto the north, and away to the shining, 
wave-bound west, and heard the Voice, say- 
ing, " This is the land which I sware unto 
Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob " ? 

It w^as not long, at least, before he knew. 
" Thou shalt not cross over this Jordan," was 
soon to reveal itself to him as an infinite prom- 
ise, — beyond all ever given to the patriarchs, 
— veiled behind a brief and small denial. 

We know of him once more in such fashion 
as signifies, with the grand simplicity of all 
spiritual assertion, whither he had "entered 
in " from that lonely peak of Nebo, where 
men said " the servant of the Lord " had 
" died," " according to the w^ord of the Lord." 

We are told of him as standing upon an- 
other mountain afterward, within the precincts 
of this same typical Holy Land, with the shin- 
ing of the Eternal Light in his form and gar- 



402 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

ments, when his Lord, in a vision, assumed for 
a little space the glory he had always with the 
Father, and when from out the unseen, his 
two prophets who had passed alike mysteri- 
ously from the earthly, as without the mortal 
change, into the near heavenly, with similar 
close and swift transition came beside Him to 
hold wonderful converse ; to part, even to his 
disciples' sight, the veil that keeps men blind, 
and permit the effulgence of the inner, vital 
sphere to break forth and flash upon them its 
supreme disclosures. 

Are they not like grand stepping-stones, 
from point to point of our long crossing to- 
ward the eternal hope, — these mountain sum- 
mits of vision, lifting themselves at their se- 
rene, waiting distances, to give, each successive 
one, a nearer and yet nearer glimpse and 
approach for our apprehension and realizing ? 
Horeb, — Pisgah, — that sacred " mountain 
apart" of the Transfiguration, near Csesarea 
Philipp;, — the hill in Galilee of the resur- 
rection meeting, - — Olivet, of the palms and 
hosannas, and of the Ascension, — the " great 
and high mountain " of the Apocalyptic pre- 
monstration, — they are the heights in time 
upon which the glory of the eternities has 
struck with its illumination. 



THE ENTERING IN 403 

Moses believed in the Kingdom of God 
upon the earth ; in the direct ruling of the 
Supreme in every heart and life, and in all 
the affairs of men ; that there could be no com- 
munity nor nationality except such as should 
be formed by such ruling, and through the 
living, inspiring Wisdom ; no government but 
by the immediate, practical, particular Will of 
God. He believed beforehand in the Lord's 
Prayer. 

What else did the Son of God himself de- 
clare, — but that this Kingdom of Heaven was 
real, integral, at hand? What else was the 
Gospel of a new birth and life for individual 
souls and for the race ? 

What else \vas the vision of the Apocalypse, 

— that last showing from the mountain top of 
spiritual insight and prophecy, — but the scene 
of the " gathering in of all things in Christ," 

— in a sonhood of all humanity to God the 
Father ; a dwelling in the one re-joined and 
manifested sphere, the many mansions and 
the holy City of the peoples redeemed unto 
God out of all the earth, and abiding in his 
Light, having no need of the sun or any lesser 
dispensation, no need of any control but the 
guidance of God's look and word, of any 



404 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

leadership or organization but of Divine Will 
and its sweet, sure, heavenly forces ; where 
there shall be no more pain in human hearts 
nor contradiction in human lives nor clashing 
nor discord nor war any more among men, 
but the leaves of the tree of life, — every fresh 
forth-putting of an infinite growth and pro- 
gress, — shall be for healing and for peace, 
and " God himself shall wipe away all tears 
from off all faces " ? Where the glory and 
honor of the kings and the nations of the 
earth shall be brought in before the One King 
and to the joy of the One Nation, and nothing 
shall enter that defileth or maketh a lie, but 
only they who are written in the Lamb's Book 
of Life? 

Toward this, in the first dispensation, Moses 
lived, and thought, and prayed, and wrought. 
He brought his people, by the power that was 
given into his soul and act from God, to the 
beginning of such a life — representatively — 
in a new land. He established a theocracy ; 
the only government that ever immediately 
acknowledged and referred to God as its au- 
thority upon the earth ; and such vitality from 
above was in the institution, that broken up 
as its form and centrality have been, a son of 



THE ENTERING IN 405 

Judah is a Jew to-day, a Hebrew is a child of 
Israel, and Jerusalem and the return of the 
believing people to their God and to his reign 
over them in his Holy Place are the living 
hope and expectation that yet survive, to make 
at least perpetual sign of that which shall be, 
and which they who confess to the Word al- 
ready made flesh among us, acknowledge and 
rejoice in, — amidst all the hindrances and 
baitings and confusions of a yet but half re- 
deemed condition, — as a thing begun, a glory 
surely to be perfected, an utterance gone forth 
from Him who hath spoken nothing that shall 
return unto Him void. 

Was it not a fit time for Moses to enter in 

— not to the little place and continued author- 
ity there which to men might seem his earning 
and reward, — but to the central grand Reality 
from which all his inspiration had been drawn, 

— to those " things in the heavens " of which 
the " pattern " had been " shown him in the 
mount," and symbolized by him for the sons 
of Israel ? 

" He was not ; for God took him." He 
never came down among the people from that 
peak of Nebo. The mortal of him " died there, 



406 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

and the Lord buried him." What was that 
death and burial ? How shall we dare to say ? 
We may at least feel that it was something as 
grand, as significant, as his life had been. 

Moses, — Enoch, — Elijah, — and the Son 
of God who was also the Son of Man ; these, 
according to the record, passed away from 
earth leaving no earthly behind them ; no 
body to decay, no vestige as of a destruction. 
What does such a record mean? For the 
record is there ; it has been conceived of and 
believed, to claim the least for it ; it is an 
idea, a thought, a vital thing. What shall we 
do with it ? 

Saint Peter, on the day of Pentecost, made 
glorious answer, declaring the resurrection : — 

" Whom " (Jesus of Nazareth) " God hath 
raised up, having loosed the pains of death ; 
because it was not possible that he should be 
holden of it.''' 

There is a law of life over death ; a law by 
which that which is temporal gives place, in 
a quiet, natural order, to that which is eternal. 
That which is transmutes into the thing that 
shall be ; that which has been all alive with 



THE ENTERING IN 407 

God hath ill it no element of the perishing. 
The body is more than the garment; death 
is swallowed up in life. '' Thou hast made 
known unto me the ways of life," says David, 
and Peter quotes him : " My flesh also shall 
rest in hope, because . . . thou wilt not suffer 
thy Holy One to see corruption." 

Gently, swiftly, the spirit may detach itself 
from the flesh ; so much may be spirit that the 
flesh may fall to invisible particles of its ori- 
ginal matter, — who can tell ? We know the 
gradual, loathsome process that has to be hid- 
den away out of our sight. God knows other 
processes. Men may have all been meant 
to die by a translation ; here and there it has 
been possible, perhaps, to show the beautiful 
palingenesis. Saint Paul touches the possi- 
bility in his wonderful theory of the resur- 
rection. " We shall not all sleep ; we shall 
be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of 
an eye : the dead shall be raised incorrupt- 
ible and we shall be changed." Need this 
be interpreted as a double resurrection, at a 
literal trumpet sound, at a fixed and general 
Last Day ? Have we not possibly mistaken 
the sublime reach of its meaning ? What was 
dead shall disappear — - shall be dissipated, 



408 LAST DAYS OF THE WANDERINGS 

dissolved into new life ; the spiritual, the in- 
corruptible, shall be raised up, and instantly. 
Is there any wrenching in such a reading ? 

" No man knoweth of his sepulchre." 

We must leave it there. Augustly, solemnly, 
as he had lived, communed with Deity, and 
given messages to men, the man Moses de- 
parted from the earth, and was lifted up. 
The heavens closed about him, and the earth 
showed no grave. 

Even so was the Son of Man lifted up. 

And He shall draw all men unto Him. 



CLOSING NOTE 

If in the foregoing pages, which represent 
successive studies, made at somewhat varying 
intervals, of the intrinsic meaning of the 
Transactions of the Pentateuch, there seem 
possibly some superfluous repetition of sug- 
gested thought, let it be remembered that 
Holy Scripture itself inevitably and constantly 
reiterates. It is all a Deuteronomy. In the 
final analysis there are but a few essential 
verities that can even appear to stand sepa- 
rately. At the heart of all is the absolute 
Unity which we seek by any research into 
Truth. There are but two great command- 
ments, on which hang all the law and the 
prophets ; and these two are like, the one to 
the other. The deeper we investigate, the 
more nearly single we find all cause and law. 
The Bible teaches with " line upon line, pre- 
cept upon precept, here a little, and there a 
little," of the same great things, presented 
and re-presented in all utterance and experi- 
ence. That the Bible does this, as our life 



410 CLOSING NOTE 

does it, is unmistakable proof that like life it- 
self it is of the everlasting Word and Work 
of God. Receiving over and over, in manifold 
repeated ways, the selfsame grand and beauti- 
ful perceptions, — arriving over and over again 
at the same central points by different con- 
verging approaches, — we recognize, as we 
could no otherwise, the interior facts of being 
to which all human history and cognition give 
evidence and refer. In the witnessing of two 
or three, or many demonstrations, is each tes- 
timony emphasized and the whole revelation 
rounded and established. 



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